Mi 



r^oBifisofl 






MM- • 











vIvI«i%<*K<v>X''.s<'"-: 









LIBRARY OF COMGRESS. 
©lap @oin|iT# lo- 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



> 



*4l 



DISSOLUTION OF THE TRIO 



OB, 



THE BREAKING UP OF THE GREAT ANTI- 
CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION. 




BY / 
1/ 
G. CLEMENT ROBINSON. 

•'f 



oX«o 




/ 

iiNGTON' 

FALL RIVER, MASS. : 

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR. 

1889. 



^b-^''^ 

,-^6^ 



COPYKIGHT, 1889, BY 

G. CLEMENT ROBINSON. 



J. S. Gushing & Co., Printers, Boston. 



] 



THIS BOOK 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO MY BELOVED WIFE, 

KATE BRANDON ROBINSON. 



PREFACE. 



The author of this work was a member in good stand- 
ing of the Methodist Episcopal Church for over thirty 
years. He left the church with the best of good feeling 
towards all. 

The effect of the change has produced in him an en- 
largement of the heart to that degree that all the world 
can now stand inside of it and still be room for more. 

For further introduction and explanation of the work 
the reader is respectfully referred to its contents. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Paganism of the Old Testament 9 

II. Footprints of Paganism in the New Testament . 21 

III. The Dogma of Immaculate Conception .... 35 

IV. The Doctrine of Christ 42 

V. Prophecy of the Sermon on the Mount ... 67 

VI. The Coming of Christ 93 

VII. Chronology of the Twenty-three Hundred Days 

OF Daniel 110 

VIII. Nebuchadnezzar's Dream 115 

IX. Building the Temple 118 

X. Gospel, or Good News . . . . o 128 

XI. Future Probation ,....., 132 

XII. The Literal Resurrection of Christ .... 137 

XIII. Lying Wonders : What are they ? 146 

XIV. Prophecy Misapplied 155 

XV. The Prophets of Israel 171 

XVI. Labor 182 

XVII. Breaking up of the Anti-Christian Dispensation 198 

XVIII. Revelation . . . , , . 216 

XIX. The Trio 228 

XX. Recapitulation , 237 



DISSOLUTION OF THE TRIO. 

oK>^^o* 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGANISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

It seems incredible that men of intelligence and educa- 
tion in this enlightened age will assert that they believe 
the whole Bible is inspired. Even Christ himself asserted 
to the contrar}'. He says (Matt. v. 38), "Ye have heard 
that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a 
tooth. But I say unto you. That ye resist not evil" ; this 
and several other articles he repudiates which were written 
in the law of Moses and declared to be the command of 
God (Lev. xxiv. 20). 

It is not supposable that Christ ever repudiated any- 
thing that God inspired to be written, or that He com- 
manded ; therefore it is evident that some things got 
into the Bible outside of inspiration. "We are perfectly 
familiar with the logic of the clergy, that these things 
were inspired under law as a contrast to grace. But it is 
only a sample of their elastic theology. God is the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever, and His principles never 
change ; neither did Christ ever change anything author- 
ized by Him. But He told the Jews they had made the 
word of God of no effect by their traditions. It is not at 



10 PAGAKTSM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

all probable that He enumerated all the traditions in the 
Bible ; if He had, He would have spoken of one in Deut. 
xiv. 21, which says, "Ye shall not eat of anything that 
dieth of itself : thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is 
in th}' gates, that he may eat it ; or thou mayest sell 
it unto an alien : for thou art a holy people unto the Lord 
thy God." 

"A pretty mess of pickles" for a holy people to be 
caught in, selling diseased meat to strangers under the 
guise of divine inspiration ! If that is a divine principle, it 
is just as good to-day as ever, and perfectly in order to sell 
beef that died of pneumonia, or pork that died of hog 
cholera. Are God's children so depraved that they will 
believe snch vile scandal of their Heavenly Father, and 
charge God with being the authority for such wickedness? 
If any one thinks such a charge is no reproach, let them 
charge some wealthy man with it and publish the charge, 
and see how kindly the man would take to it ; and provid- 
ing the charge to be true, see how kindh' the state would 
take to the man. Shame npon the man or woman accept- 
ing such slanders of God's character ! even though the 
angel Gabriel proclaimed them, as Paul says some things 
are not to be believed though angels teach them. Is 
there no protection? Must the holy name of God be 
smirched by vile tradition simply because the libel has 
been sandwiched into Divine Revelation. 

But orthodoxy would have us believe that God reforms 
from a condition of bestial savagery under law to one of 
the highest traits of pure character under grace. 

'' Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, 
and kill every woman that liath known man by lying with 
him. But all the women children [girls] that have not 



PAGANISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 11 

knowD a man by lying with him, keep alive for your- 
selves" (Num. xxxi. 17, 18), per order of Moses. 

" And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly 
destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of 
every city, we left none to remain" (Deut. ii. 3dt). 
This was a part of Moses' report to the children of Israel 
of their war record. Now to sum up this matter : it was 
simply Pagan vs. Pagan, and Moses and his tribes fought 
other Pagans on exactly the same principles that other 
Pagans fought them, and the principles were exactly the 
same that Christ condemned as not belonging to God. 
Terah, the father of Abraham, was a Pagan ; Abraham 
was a Pagan ; Isaac was a Pagan ; Jacob was a Pagan ; 
and the twelve sons of Jacob were Pagans : they had 
their sacrificial altars which the prophet declares God 
did not authorize (Jer. vii. 22). 

Abraham, though in a certain sense a reformer and an 
advanced thinker in his day, to that degree that he 
dropped the worship of images and had some advanced 
ideas of the spiritual character of God ; yet the Paganism 
of sacrificial belief adhered to him as leaven from the old 
pagan lump : he still imagined God must be patted on the 
back and stroked the smooth way to keep Him in good 
humor, and, like his pagan contemporaries, he fancied 
that human blood and that of the dearest relative was 
the most acceptable and effective to keep down His ire. 
This fanaticism preyed upon his mind until he resolved 
to offer his own son upon the sacrificial altar ; when at 
the cruel moment of execution his heart failed him, and 
he excused his failure by substituting a ram. 

But the devilish example had done its work as a 
precedent, and it has cost the life of many a darling 



12 PAGANISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

child in consequence. It cost the life of Jephthah's daugh- 
ter and sanctioned the custom among the Jews of casting 
their children into the fire to Moloch. Its effects have 
continued down through the ages and penetrated even 
our boasted civilization, in which several cases of child- 
sacrifice have been recorded, the last of which was the 
well-known Freeman case of Pocasset, Mass. When he 
plunged the fanatical knife into the vitals of his sweet 
little daughter. Freeman had the same instrument for 
communicating with God that Abraham had, which was 
the imaginings of his own thoughts. 

The pretence of the patriarchs, that they had any other 
means of communication, shows that they were not above 
the common pagan notions and lying customs of their 
day, as indeed their own history bears record. Like all 
reformers, these reformers only went to the limit of their 
advanced light, still retaining fragments of the old Pagan- 
ism, and thus they transmitted to posterity the horrors of 
their bloody altars which adhered to their national con- 
stitution until they were destroyed by Rome ; and whether 
the Jews ever return to Palestine or not, they can never 
again run another divine slaughter-house. 

Solomon, the world's greatest bigamist and libertine, 
dedicated the Hoi}- Temple to the sacrificial tune of 
" Ruddygore," intonating the music with the voices of 
twenty - two thousand bellowing oxen in the agonies 
of death, and the bleating tongues of one hundred and 
twent}^ thousand inoffensive creatures that furnish to man 
a large share of the benefactions of life (1 Kings viii. 63). 

This horrid scene of brutal barbarism is looked upon 
by the present Christian Pagan with pleasant approval ; 
while they gather from it authority for their blood-stained 



PAGANISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 13 

theology. But alas ! it symbolizes too well the bloody 
slaughter-house of the dark ages, whose sacrifice of human 
victims bears the historic record of one hundred and fifty 
millions. Imagine, for a moment, the undulating melody 
of these intonating voices in the dedication of this vast 
dispensational temple ; the groans, the moans, the shrieks, 
the death-rattle of this colossal army of human victims, 
and then listen to this righteous prophecy: "There shall 
not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be 
thrown down" (Matt. xxix. 2). Thank God for at least 
one inspired prophecy ! 

The production of all trees and plants comes through 
the same process of root-and-seed development they did 
six thousand years ago. Hence corn taken from a mummy 
case said to be three thousand 3'ears old, germinates and 
grows by the same laws of vegetation that corn raised last 
year does. 

In these days, when we wish to make a legend, a fable, 
or a tradition, we plant a lie and raise the fruit, because 
we know that a lie is the only seed or root that will pro- 
duce these specimens ; and, like the mummy corn, they 
grow from the same seed and root and by the same process 
they did three and six thousand years ago, and the fruit 
is the same it was then ; namely, a lie. 

In the words of Paul, these ancestors have " changed 
the truth of God into a lie." 

By planting abundant seed in thriving soil, they raised 
the generous crop of legends, traditions, and fables re- 
corded in the Old Testament, and succeeded in attaching 
them on to a credulous posterity as facts. 

" Ye have made the word of God of none effect by your 
traditions," had reference to the written traditions in the 



14 PAGANISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Old Testament, which were mixed up with the truth. 
There are some things there that all classes recognize as 
truth, but they are so interwoven with fable that they 
nullify the whole mass as long as they remain in this 
mixed condition. The same is true also of the New 
Testament. The word of God is truth tvherever it is 
founds and is not necessarily written in Bibles or spoken 
by priestcraft ; and much of it has never yet been either 
spoken or written. 

These ancestral patriarchs were onl}^ Pagans dwelling 
among Pagans, differing in no living principles from any 
other Pagans, except in a few crude ideas of the Deity, 
but nothing that made the slightest practical difference in 
their characters. Lying, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
was practised as a virtue of expediency ; and with the 
twelve sons of Jacob it was a matter of business, — who 
were a set of heartless freebooters. That they did not 
murder their own brother was no fault of theirs : they fully 
intended it ; and this was the condition of pagan Israel 
when they went down to pagan Egypt, and were slaves 
to those Egyptian Pagans for more than four centuries. 
Whoever Moses was, he was raised and educated in the 
royal family of pagan Egypt : he was imbued with the 
double mixture of Egyptian and Israelitish superstitions, 
and Joshua was of the same character ; and if both of 
them were not given to lying, then we must admit that God 
was the author and commanded those inhuman butcheries 
of little children (of whom Christ says, ''of such is the 
kingdom of heaven"), and authorized the selling and 
giving of diseased meat to strangers and aliens ; for both 
of them claimed that these things were the authorized 
command of God. Now this statement of theirs was a 



PAGANISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 15 

slander of the holy name of Divine Love, whose iin- 
qiialified couiumnd is to '' love your enemies, bless them 
that curse you, do good to tliem that hate you, and pray 
for them that despitefully use you and persecute you " 
(Matt. V. 44). 

\Yhen men have done such high-handed lying, what 
would they not do ? and who could expect such men to 
give true statements of facts of anything? and these are 
the men from whom we receive the fables about the crea- 
tion. Now the question is, Where did they get them? 
Did they borrow them from Egypt, or from their own an- 
cestry, or did they make it up ? If they borrowed it from 
Egypt, it was pagan ; if they got it from their own ances- 
tors, it was pagan, and handed down from Terah, through 
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve cut- throat sons, 
and the generations of Egyptian bondage of four hundred 
years ; but if they made it up, it was fable, and was an 
imitation of pagan theology ; and the whole account is 
just as absurd, silly, and revolting to common sense as 
any other pagan story that brings the smile of sarcasm 
and sneer of scorn to the Christian. 

But whether they made it up or borrowed it, it is very 
evident from other Scripture that they made up the great 
mass of theh* cumbersome religious rites and ceremonies. 

"For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded 
them in the day that I brought them out of the land of 
Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices" (Jer. vii. 
22). This statement b}' the prophet not only shows that 
Moses did a lot of theological manufacturing, but it smites 
to atoms all that nonsense about a typical sacrifice, point- 
ing to a vicarious atonement and substitutional righteous- 
ness, and shows that all the animal slaughter for thousands 



16 PAGANISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

of 3'ears by the wholesale was all a gratuity on the part of 
them that inaugurated and executed it, and was never 
required of them ; but on the contrary, the whole of it was 
offensive to God. 

"I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, 
or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me, who 
hath required this at 3'our hand, bring no more vain obla- 
tions ; incense is an abomination to me" (Is. i. 11, 12, 
13). 

'' I will take no bullock out of thy house, or he goats out 
of thy folds : for every beast of the forest is mine, and 
the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of 
the mountains : and the wild beasts of the field are mine. 
If I were hungry, I would not tell thee : for the world 
is mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of 
bulls, or of goats?" (Ps. 1. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13). 

These texts show that the children of Israel were 
indebted to Paganism, and not to God, for their burden- 
some system of blood and cruelty, and they had the same 
vulgar sense of them that the heathen of whom they bor- 
rowed them had ; to wit, that God sniffed the fumes of 
their savory meat-offerings, and His wrath was appeased ; 
that God was hungry and needed to be fed, hence the 
multitude of sacrificial offerings ; just as all Pagans feed 
their gods. But as God was to Israel spirit, and invisible, 
they must spiritualize the food by burning, and send it up 
in vapor, the same as Chinamen burn rice and money for 
their departed friends and gods ; and their conversation, 
like that of all Pagans, was entirely relevant to their sen- 
sual ideas, when they talked of God's smelling sweet 
savors and relishing these feasts of their preparing. And 
so these infallible proofs of the pagan origin of their rites 



PAGANISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 17 

and ceremonies runs all through the Old Testament. That 
the}^ inherited their Mother Goose fables of the creation, 
the antediluvians, the flood, and other fables from a com- 
mon pagan ancestry, there is no room for doubt ; and the 
fact that every pagan nation to-day holds substantially 
the same traditions, handed down from time immemorial, 
is collateral evidence of the fact. 

Having established the fact from its own premises that 
much of the Old Testament is borrowed Paganism, we will 
not spend more time and space in further pursuit of the 
subject ; although, if all the facts were brought out in 
proof, it would of itself make a large volume, as it is a 
voluminous mass of mixed principles. 

Not that we wish to deny that there is divine inspiration 
in the Old Testament ; on the contrary, we believe there 
is, and that there always has been, divine inspiration in all 
ages, and that inspiration is more marked at the present 
time than it ever was before, and God is gradually but 
surely shaping the world into the conditions of divine per- 
fection. But not through the instrument of the Church. 
She is like the ignorant mariner who thought he had out- 
sailed the north star, and lost his point of compass. 

The Church parted with her north star on the eve of her 
embarkment on the ocean of time, and has since boxed 
her compass by the milky way of numberless stars, being 
blown about by various doctrinal winds, and drifting into 
the straits of confusion with a bark laden with fuss and 
folly, and chartered for Purgatory, — a harbor not down 
on the map ;' while the evening star (of truth) she parted 
with so long ago has become the bright and morning star. 

The great effort of inspiration and burden of prophetic 
solicitude was to lift Israel above and out of Paganism, and 



18 PAGANISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

through Israel to liberate the whole world ; and hence the 
ceaseless antagonism of the prophets to their idolatries. 

But when their great prophet and reformer appeared, 
they were so thoroughly imbued with the Paganism of their 
fathers that they were condemned as old bottles, too rotten 
to hold new (ideas of reform) wine ; old garments too seedy 
to patch : consequently the old pagan bark of Israel was 
abandoned for a new system of principles founded upon 
the rock of divine character, having the truth for their 
base, and the attributes of love, wisdom, and universal 
beneficence as the resulting product, instead of bestowing 
all upon a favored few, with the privilege of enslaving the 
many. 

But this new Jerusalem, unfortunately, soon fell into 
the power of another Paganism worse than that of Juda- 
ism. 

Pagan Rome grafted their own tree on to the root of 
Israel's Paganism, and sandwiched the germ of the new 
world (the doctrines of Christ) between the two Pagans, 
mutilating its beauty and glory and nullifying its priceless 
virtue in their efforts to fit it to the two old stumps. But, 
thanks to God, the eternal vitality of the new shoot has 
outlived the decay of the other two corrupting systems of 
rot and rust, and is now putting forth its shoots in the 
world's springtime, with the blessed assurance of a glorious 
summer succession where old wives' fables of talking 
snakes, women made of ribs, the multitude of earth's 
beasts, birds, and reptiles separating themselves out in 
pairs, and repairing to a small boat not sufficient for a 
fractional part of them ; making rainbows for a covenant 
testament or witness ; the sun taking orders from man 
whether to move on or stop, to give sanction to butchering 



PAGANISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 19 

women, and little children who constitute the kingdom 
of heaven ; men living in whales' bellies three days, with 
no air to breathe or power to sustain life ; men or gods 
born of virgins, unsired by man ; the dead raised to liCe 
from the grave of four days' decay, and the benefactor 
executed for the deed ; and a thousand and one pagan 
falsehoods, will not be tolerated, and where superstition 
will find no soil. 

All nature is an eternal witness against the Old Testa- 
ment account of the creation ; for nowhere in the universe 
can an instance be found where God began at the top to 
build down, but the reverse in every case. God, man, 
beasts, birds, fishes, and all nature invariably, without one 
single exception, begin at the base and build up ; therefore 
man never was in a higher condition than he is now, but 
like all the rest of creation he has gradually developed 
from a lower order up to the present condition. As Paul 
says, '^ first the blade, then the ear, afterwards the full corn 
in the ear." What would one think to plant corn and find 
the full corn in the ear before the blade appeared, and then 
have the blade grow afterwards ? He would be obliged to 
think that God had departed from His old-time custom. 

The claim set up by Christendom, that the Israelites 
were saved by looking forward by faith through their sac- 
rifices to Christ, is false ; for in the first place, none of 
them had such an understanding ; but, like all other idola- 
ters, they believed in the virtue of their ceremonial rites to 
set them right before God. The idea of a coming Saviour 
to save the soul never entered the mind of an Israelite. 
The highest thought they ever expressed of Him was the 
Messiah, the Hebrew word for anointed^ which mennt 
nothing more to them than a king. Furthermore, God 



20 



PAGANISM OF THE OLD TESTAJVIENT, 



emphatically denies being the author of those ceremonies 
and sacrifices. They were entirely gratuitous and super- 
fluous on their part (Jer. vii. 22). 

We have thus briefly considered a very limited number 
of the many things in the Old Testament that give indis- 
putable proofs of pagan origin, not caring to extend the 
subject farther than is absolutely necessary, in order to 
introduce in relative order the subject of Paganism in the 
New Testament ; for it is not Jews, but Autichristians, 
we are contending with. 



PAGANISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 21 



CHAPTER 11. 

FOOTPRINTS OF PAGANISM IN THE NEW 
TESTAMENT. 

The most subtle ignorance in the universe is educated 
ignorance, or knowledge based upon false premises. 

An education that must eventuall}^ be unlearned is 
worse than no education. 

A lie, in order to be a success, necessitates its being- 
accepted on faith, without evidences ; while the truth 
stands on the evidences of incontrovertible facts. 

Hence the requirements of pagan sophistry, with all its 
marvellous tales of great signs and lying wonders, grant- 
ing no option but to believe the improbable, or eternally 
perish. Upon this shifting sand-bed of heathen mythology 
is reared the complicated structure called Christianity, 
with all its intricate machinery and master-manipulators, 
who strut in the proud consciousness that they know all 
that can ever be known, because they received it from 
their pagan ancestry nearly two thousand years ago. 

There are two opposing elements, representing princi- 
ples of two opposite poles, running counter to each other, 
entirely through the New Testament, like two giant foes 
in " mortal combat," whose only terms are " death to the 
vanquished." 

These principles appear in the form of broken frag- 



22 FOOTPRINTS OF PAGANISM 

meiits of beautiful sentiments, apparently wrested out 
from classic discourses, and interspersed with pagan 
twaddle, representing a mass of irreconcilable contradic- 
tories in which one class of statements are constantly 
giving another class the lie. 

While we see conclusive evidence of divine authorship 
in the New Testament in the superior character of some 
of its principles, flashing out brilliant rays of divine light, 
revealing doctrines that for glory and beauty transcend 
the highest thought of human conception, sentiments that 
bear the inscription of the divine address in the creden- 
tials of their principles, they come swooping down to 
us like a troop of white-winged messengers, proffering 
us their sacred service to bear us up to the bosom of 
a loving Father, and the family circle of a common 
brotherhood of which Jesus the Christ stands at the 
head. 

Running counter to all this, though interspersed with 
it, we discern a reverse order of principles of a gross 
material character, intensely subtle in their operation, 
seeking to overthrow by insinuating themselves into the 
very foundation of the divine order ; feigning aflSnity, 
and intermingling for the purpose of corrupting the 
whole mass ; introducing principles for doctrine that 
earthly courts would be impeached for practising, and 
of which devils might consistently be ashamed. 

Unfortunately for the marvellous character of the New 
Testament, like that of the Old, it is the product of 
centuries of after-thoughts. Moses did not write the 
Pentateuch ; neither did Cin^ist write the gospels ; neither 
did the parties whose names are forged to them write 
them. The so-called apocryphal gospels and epistles 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 23 

have the apostles' and early fathers' names attached to 
them ; and one of them even claims to be an epistle of 
Christ's, showing that such kind of practice was very com- 
mon in the early history of the Church. These books form 
a volume nearly as large as the canonical New Testament. 
Now, if the names attached to the spurious writings were 
forged, where is the barrier to their having forged the 
whole of them? All that constitutes the New Testament 
in its present form was written this side of the third cen- 
tury. No manuscript pretends to go behind that. It is 
more than evident that the true doctrines of Christ, as 
they came to the pagan mind, did not suit their depraved 
taste. Having the hereditary birthmark of transmitted 
idolatry for ages, they could not receive a natural religion 
resting upon fixed principles of eternal truth ; so they 
galvanized it, or idolized it, so to speak, mixing in 
enough of the Christ to give it seeming authority ; but at 
the same time keeping the idolatry the most prominent, 
and placing it in such a relation as to cause it to nullify 
the truth, and give idolatry the first place in the fun- 
damental construction of systematic theology. In the 
words of Christ, they made '' the word of God [truth] of 
none effect by their traditions." 

Starting with the first chapter of Matthew, we first 
come in contact with the dogma of immaculate con- 
ception, wherein is laid the foundation of a series of 
inordinate doctrines, all springing out of this subtle 
abomination, possessing the same unnatural character, 
and destined to go down with it. Opposed to this pagan 
fable stand the words of Christ to Nicodemus (John iii. 
6), " That which is born of the Spirit is spirit ; and that 
which is born of the flesh is flesh." We see at once that 



24 FOOTPRINTS OF PAGANISM 

these words are based upon the fact of eternal, inexorable 
law ; that flesh and spnit cannot cross with each other 
out of theh^ different spheres, any more than a man can 
cross with a fish. Spirit-begetting is a process of mind 
operating upon minds ; while flesh-begetting is a process 
entirely of matter operating upon matter, relegated to all 
animal existence. 

There is an infallible rule by which to distinguish be- 
tween the true doctrines of Christ and those of Paganism, 
as they appear in the New Testament. 

For while the doctrines of Christ are invariably grounded 
in fixed laws as eternal as God, those of Paganism are 
as invariably laid in special violations and suspension of 
natural laws to satisfy the sensual, devilish, grovelling 
propensity for something inordinate, ghastly, supernatu- 
ral, fearful, horrifying, mysterious ; in short, an instru- 
ment of torture to coerce, to be wielded in the hands of 
a few D.D.'s (said to be doctors of divinity ; but, as 
divinity never was sick, we conclude they stand for 
''doctrines of devils"), to terrorize the legions of dupes 
that let out their thinking to be done by proxy, at the 
dear price of their own continued ignorance. 

It is the same spirit that delights to look upon mon- 
strosities, such as a fish with a human head, a double- 
headed woman ; half man, half bear ; to have a being 
half man and half God is the satiation of morbid de- 
pravity ; it satisfies the craving of that unnatural beast of 
inordinate desire for things opposed to natural laws, and 
never seems so pleased as when it sees law violated by 
some freak. 

Passing on, we come to the following text (Mark viii. 
12) : '^ And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and said. Why 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 25 

doth this generation seek a sign? Veril3% I say unto you, 
there shall no sign be given this generation." This text 
makes no qualification whatever, but simply states that 
no sign shall be given. But Matt. xii. 39, xvi. 4; Luke 
xi. 29, adds, '' But the sign of the prophet Jonah." This 
addition bears the unmistakable handwriting of the pagan 
forger in a double purpose, — to identify Christ with the 
indorsement of the fables of the Old Testament, and also 
to lay the foundation for the development of new ones in 
the New Testament. And here again we see the pagan 
"mark of the beast in its forehead"; i.e. the ideas of 
sensual mythology, in the seat of its intelligence, the 
head. 

But according to this absolute statement of Christ, that 
no sign should be given to that generation, He raised no 
dead to life, turned no water into wine, multiplied no 
bread or fish by miraculous power, or did any other super- 
natural thing that could be construed into signs, any of 
which would have constituted all the sign any reasonable 
being could ask for ; and we do not believe the person 
ever lived that could or would ask a greater sign than the 
raising of a man after having been dead and buried four 
days. 

Opposed to this positive assertion of Christ's, that no 
sign should be given, stands this pagan assertion in John 
ii. 11, new version, which reads : '' This beginning of His 
signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee." This is the Anti- 
christ that John speaks of, that denies the Christ, denies 
His statements, opposes Him throughout. 

This fable of the wine miracle presents Christ in a posi- 
tion censurable to all creation, as fostering and giving 
divine sanction to a practice more damaging in its results 



26 FOOTPRINTS OF PAGANISM 

than that of any other in the world's history, a practice 
that has proved the greatest moral curse ever known to 
the race of man ; a practice that, according to orthodoxy, 
has sent more men to hell in the last eighteen centuries 
than the blood of Christ has redeemed. Here again, in 
this fable, we would call attention to the distinctive feat- 
ure between Christ and Paganism ; Christ in the natural, 
and Paganism in the fabulous or supernatural. 

Christ, in describing the manner of His coming (pres- 
ence) at the end of the dispensation, declares emphatically 
that it will not be by observation ; ^.e. He will not be 
visible to mortal sight or touch, but will be represented by 
the breaking light of a new day ; i.e, by the entering in 
of the truth to take the place of error (Matt. xxiv. 27 ; 
Luke xvii. 22, 23, 24). He used the plainest terms and 
figures to make it sufficiently clear for every one to un- 
derstand, that it would not occur through any shock to 
nature's laws of inordinate action, but in the regular estab- 
lished order of Divine Providence, under the ordinary, 
universal, working principle of intelligent action, freed 
from the limitations of a tangible personality, all coming 
about by the operation of natural law and order. 

But Paganism cannot see spiritual things ; it must have 
a literal, personal identity that it can focus on its little 
retina, to prove to the brain that it sees ; but the symbol 
is all it does see, which is virtually nothing ; hence another 
fable is necessary, which we find in Acts i. 11 : "Ye men 
of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This 
same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven shall 
so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into 
heaven." Please note here again that distinguishing feat- 
ure that separates the two doctrines : Christ's statement, 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 27 

based iipou the uiitural, regular, established order of 
development ; Paganism, with its suspended law and shock 
to nature. But, says one, that involves the resurrection. 
Very true ; it does involve and invalidates the violent, 
unnatural, and gross idea of a material resurrection. 
Neither Christ nor His apostles ever taught such a resur- 
rection, either for Himself or any one else. But, like all 
the rest of Christ's teachings, the resurrection was based 
upon the law of universal natural development from lower 
to higher order, and was considered in two senses : one in 
being raised from the death of false and erroneous think- 
ing to the life of the divine or true thought ; the other 
was in the sense of a continued existence after dissolu- 
tion. But the former sense was the one w^hich involved 
the labors of Christ and the apostles, to correct erroneous 
thinking and turn their minds into the channels of divine 
thought, which is salvation. The other kind they did not 
trouble themselves about, for the very good reason that it 
would take care of itself, as it is a fixed principle in the 
regular order of universal law, and is never visible to mor- 
tal sense. Hence Paul says to those disciples then living : 
''If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are 
above." They were not dead ; they certainlv could not 
have had a " literal resurrection" ; but their thought had 
been changed from thinking, as the Antichristianity of 
the present day does, of every one for himself and the 
Devil take the hindermost, to the divine idea of living 
for the whole "body," and ministering to others instead 
of to self. This was the resurrection out from the dead 
state, a state that God has no part in, called death be- 
cause opposed to God, who is life because of truth (Col. 
iii. 1). 



28 FOOTPRINTS OF PAGANISM 

Paul sa3's of Christ: "He was made of the seed of 
David according to the flesh" ; i.e. by a natural father 
and naother. " Was declared to be the Son of God with 
power, according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrec- 
tion from the dead " (Rom. i. 3, 4). This cannot refer to 
the state after death, but to the death state or condition 
here, because Christ was called the Son of God long be- 
fore He died a physical death. Then if the resurrection 
from the dead declared Him the Son of God, it certainly 
was not resurrection from physical, but from moral or 
spiritual, death, that declared that condition. We repeat 
that Christ taught the doctrine of a natural religion, which 
He took out from the evidences of natural selection. As 
Paul says, the invisible things of Him are clearly seen 
from the creation of the world, being understood by the 
things that are made. Then certainl}^ that is the place to 
look for them, and is where Christ found them ; and that 
is natural religion, and requires no revulsions or convul- 
sions of nature. 

We have no hesitation in saying that we believe the 
whole story of the resurrection, as it is represented in 
Acts and the gospels, to be a fabricated humbug, and is 
the tail end of the immaculate conception dogma. This 
whole system is such a travesty on the Old Testament 
and a libel on Judaism that it is no wonder the Jews 
cannot be converted by it ; but here is a remarkable fact, 
that in the first century the Jews were the most prominent 
and eminent among the converts to Christianity, but since 
the second century they would have nothing to do with it. 
The whole course of Christendom towards the Jew, from 
Constantine to now, has been one of persecution. And if 
the present condition of Christendom is the legitimate fruit 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 29 

of the pure teachings of Christ, we can say with the Jew, 
God give us none of it. The civilized world is getting 
too rotten by it to hold together much longer. Christ 
declares that the fruit proves the tree. Then the fruit of 
this dispensation in which the wealth, stealth, and fraud 
of Christendom is fast crowding the poor into hell, is no 
part of the teaching of Christ, but is the fruit of this great 
pretentious mystery of iniquity which has gone forth to 
the kings of the earth and to the whole world, and has filled 
their itching ears with the fabulous stories of " signs and 
lying wonders," until the truth has no place in their sensual 
minds to germinate. Their motto for righteousness is, — 

" Jesus paid it all" 
For devils great and small. 
Come, sinners, to the call, 
And join this horrid ball; 
There never was such gall 
Since Adam had a fall, 
But it's going to the wall, 
And will end up in a squall. 

Again, in Mark xii. 29 we read: Christ says, "The 
Lord our God is one Lord." That is a natural and very 
commonplace idea, but the pagan Christ says there are 
three Gods — another inordinate idea. 

Again Christ says, " Except your righteousness exceed 
the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in 
no case enter into the kingdom of heaven " — a very natural 
conclusion in the course of a natural religion. But Pagan- 
ism says that Christ is our righteousness, and by substi- 
tuting that righteousness, we can '' bob up serenely" into 
the kingdom, without a "smithereen" of our own right- 
eousness. Another discordant irregularity. 



30 FOOTPKINTS OF PAGANISM 

And we might go on increasing this volume to mam- 
moth size, showing the footprints of Paganism both in 
the Old and New Testament. But enough has been 
shown to reveal the fact and show the working principle 
as it is, opposed to the Divine Character. We doubt if 
there is another book in the universe containing as much 
falsehood and traducing of the Divine Character as the 
Bible. And yet how stupidly the masses go on defaming 
the good name of God through these abominable tradi- 
tions, which stand contradicted and condemned by every 
principle of universal law throughout the boundless realm 
of divine order. 

No one can deny that the Old Testament had its birth 
in Paganism in the ancient days of Paganism, when all 
was pagan, when Israel itself was pagan. Then they 
took their doctrines as they found them in the theology 
and traditions of their times, that were about them, in 
which they were brought up. They were ignorant, semi- 
savage, barbarous, and, according to their own history, 
extremely cruel ; and such was the state of their intel- 
lectual development that to have attempted to enlighten 
them on the basis of revealed religion in natural science 
or the divine order of development from the natural or 
material to the spiritual or mental, would have been a 
failure. Hence nursery tales and childish fables of the 
creation and the character of God were in order, as very 
thin milk for a very young baby. But it is high time, at 
this stage of advancement, to put away childish things and 
act the sense of maturity. 

It is well known, also, that the New Testament w-as 
evolved out of Roman Paganism, and that the Church is 
the successor of Constantine, and not of Peter ; that its 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 31 

name is all there is Christian about it. Its forms and 
dogmas are purely pagan. Every day of our week is 
named in honor of the gods they worshipped : Sunday 
(the day we worship) was dedicated to the sun ; Monday, 
to the moon ; Tuesday, to the god of war ; Wednesday, 
Odin, the highest god of Germans and Scandinavians ; 
Thursday, for the god Thor, god of thunder ; Friday, the 
goddess of marriage ; Saturday, dedicated to Saturn. 
These names were not in the Jewish or Christian Church, 
but came out of pagan Rome. They might not signify 
anything more than to show their origin, were it not that 
the day we set apart is the one dedicated to the worship 
of the sun, which fact locates the authority for keeping 
that day, and shows us where it sprang from — a mystery 
which has hung over the Protestant Church ever since its 
existence, to know where the authorit}' for keeping that 
day came from. As Archbishop Gibbons says, " there is 
no such authority outside of the Roman Church." It is 
not in the New Testament, and is contrary to the Old ; 
then where did the papal assumption get it ? It is one of 
the mummies of her ancient idols, which has been carted 
down to posterity with the rest of her pagan relics, all of 
which contributes to make up the present order called 
Christianity, and is nothing more nor less than pagan 
idolatry ; or, as Rabbi Solomon Schindler calls it, paganized 
Christianity. All of our boasted civilization, instead of 
being developed by Christianity so called, was developed 
in spite of it. Civil and religious tolerance, scientific and 
educational development, liberty of thought, and freedom 
of action, and any other requisite to the advancement of 
civilization has been religiously fought down step by step 
by the whole Church, and is being so to-day, only the op- 



32 FOOTPRINTS OF PAGANISM 

position is changed in form, but not in fact. The Church 
is a solid unit in opposition to every advance move looking 
to the improvement of this devilish theology, or any 
changes in the civil government looking to the ameliora- 
tion of the condition of the poor. It is not yet three 
centuries since the Church squelched Galileo for saying 
the world moves ; and although she continually strives to 
put on the brakes, the world moves in spite of her, and 
not because of her, and yet she has the effrontery to 
claim the credit for the moving. 

But to sum up : we are nothing yet in this world but 
Pagans among Pagans, and we practise the very worst 
manners of all Pagans. Then why put on so many lofty 
airs, and create a distinction by calling other sects 
Pagans, as in very man}' cases they have the best moral 
right to make the distinction ? 

All this doo-matic tradition bears not the slisrhtest rela- 
tion to wisdom of any sort, human or divine, and only 
presents a hideous caricature when we attempt to denomi- 
nate it divine wisdom. But it does bear the marks of 
true relationship in every feature to the whole pagan 
family throughout its ancestral history, and does not 
create the least caricature when considered under the 
head of Paganism, but presents the perfectly natural-to- 
life photograph of its nominee. 

The question naturally arises. If we give up all these 
things, what is there left? We answer. Everything that 
is good and true. We have the pure teaching of Christ 
minus the Paganism. We have the fact of righteousness 
minus the proxy ; a natural religion minus the super- 
natural ; as simple and satisfactory in its development 
and results as the growth of a child. 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 33 

We have the love of God minus the wrath ; the golden 
rule as the guide and rule of life minus the mystical 
ordinances ; a free salvation minus a commercial one, 
free from the fraudulent high-tariff priestcraft and grand 
cathedral encumbrances ; as free from commercial ex- 
pense as the air we breathe, to which we can invite all in 
the words of Christ and Isaiah, ''Come and buy wine and 
milk without money and without price '' ; i.e, no price for 
anybody either rich or poor (Isa. Iv. 1 ; Rev. xxii. 17). 
A religion that is, indeed, a gospel, or good news, minus 
the Satanic paradox that the great majority are roasted 
on everlasting spits. 

We have one God left who fills eternity, leaving no 
vacancy for a pard or any part of one ; who is the same 
unchanging Deity " j^esterday, to-day, and forever," 
whose laws are not made, but are self-existing facts co- 
eternal tvith Him, and constitute the truth by the law of 
the eternal fixture of their onmipresent principles. 

A religion that grants the blessed boon of dying in 
peace minus the hellish ghost of eternal torment before 
our vision, to add indescribable torture to the pangs of 
dissolution. It is an exchange for value beyond the 
power of figures to compute ; an exchange the writer 
feels grateful to the Divine Author for above all else He 
has ever bestowed ; an exchange that has brought to him 
all those things sought for but not found in a thirty years' 
campaign in the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

Christ was not at once the author of the unity of God 
in one person only, and of the trinity of God in three 
persons. 

Christ was not at once the author of a doctrinal system 
to be introduced into the world without the accompani- 



34 PAGANISM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

ment of signs and wonders, and of the mass of signs 
and wonders recorded of him in the New Testament. 

Christ was not at once the author of the declaration of 
the impossibility of flesh and spirit begetting each other, 
and of the dogma of Immaculate Conception. 

Christ was not at once the author of an invisible resur- 
rection, and appearing that cometh not by observation, 
and of a literal resurrection and re-appearing in the same 
manner of " flesh and bones." 

Christ was not at once the author of the doctrine of 
non-resistance and the bearer of swords. 

Christ was not at once the author of lavishing the 
highest beneficence in the greatest abundance upon ene- 
mies, and of commanding them to depart cursed into 
everlasting fire prepared by the devil and his angels. 

Christ was not at once the author of his own limitations ; 
that he was less than God ; that he could do nothing of 
himself ; that he knew not the day nor hour of the dis- 
pensational coming; that he did not even know where 
the grave of Lazarus was, or whose image and super- 
scription was upon the penny ; and of the doctrine that 
he was equal and co-eternal with God, and knew all 
things. 

As Christ could not possibly have been the author of 
any of these contradicting duets, we are left to choose 
between the character of the two sides of the discords as 
to which side he really was the author of ; therefore we 
choose the side which we find in harmony with the truth 
of nature, which we find runs along the line of " natural 
selection" and the " survival of the fittest." 



DOGMA OF IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 35 



CHAPTER III. 

THE DOGMA OF IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 

Happily this relic of idolatrj- is disproved upon its own 
premises. It is not necessary to search ancient records, 
or to go behind their own statements, to disprove their 
claims, because every prophetic statement bears on its 
face the impeachment of falsehood, for the simple fact 
that not a single claim is substantiated by the authorities 
they quote. By the law of '' Let us reason together," 
there is no option (where intelligence has the liberty of its 
convictions) but to reject the dogma. 

In the first place, there stands opposed to the fable the 
fact stated by Christ to Nicodemus (John iii. 6) that flesh 
does not beget Spirit, neither does Spirit beget flesh. 

But the dogma reverses the order, and makes the Spirit 
beget a man in the flesh, in order that the flesh man may, 
in turn, beget spirit. 

Beginning with the first statement in Matthew, that 
Joseph, being espoused to Mary, discovered her to be 
enceinte^ but was convinced through a dream that it was a 
spiritual phenomenon or spirit production, and was in- 
structed to call his name Jesus. 

These statements are obliged to cross weapons several 
times with the truth. First, they cross with the fact of 
natural law. 



36 DOGMA OF IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 

Secondly, it crosses with Christ's declaration that flesh 
and spirit are two irrelative elements of such diverse 
natures as to preclude the possibility of being crossed 
with each other. 

Thirdly, it opposes all the teachings of Mosaic Scrip- 
ture, but is fully taught and believed in by many forms of 
Paganism. 

And, fourthly, the claim that the name of Jesus was 
foreordained looks suspiciously false, when it is well 
known that Jesus was a name as common among Jews 
at that time as George is now among Americans, as it 
was only the Greek name for the Hebrew Joshua, and 
was called in honor of the old warrior and saviour of the 
nation of Israel, just as George is now in America the 
nationally honored name to perpetuate the memory of 
the old warrior and saviour of this country, George 
Washington. Every child whose name is Joshua to-day 
is named Jesus, the same as Christ was ; but spoken 
in the Hebrew, Joshua ; signifying in the Greek, Jesus ; 
and in English, saviour : but the signification originated 
in the acts of the old warrior in saving his country. But 
further it says, ''All this was done to fulfil that which 
was spoken of the Lord by the prophet. Behold ! a virgin 
shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name 
Emmanuel, meaning God with us." This prophecy is 
found in Is. vii. 14. And the context shows that it had 
not the slightest direct reference to Christ. It was a sign 
given for immediate fulfilment at that time, and, accord- 
ing to the context, was fulfilled in that generation. The 
context begins with the first verse of the seventh chapter 
of Isaiah, which says that two kings, Rezin and Pekah, 
went up to make war upon Jerusalem ; and the prophet 



DOGMA OF UVIMACULATE CONCEPTION. 37 

met Ahaz, and gave him the sign as an assurance that 
these two kings would not succeed in conquering Jerusa- 
lem, telling him that such a child sliould be born, and 
they should call his name Emmanuel, meaning God with 
us ; i.e. simply that God was on their part, and con- 
quered their enemies. And it says before this child shall 
come to the age of maturity, both of these kings that were 
then troubling Jerusalem should be destroyed ; and we 
are not left in doubt in reference to the fulfilment of the 
prophecy ; for in 2 Kings we find the record of the death 
of both of these kings, Pekah and Rezin (2 Kings xv. 
30 and xvi. 9). These are the two kings mentioned by 
name by the prophet that were to be destroyed during the 
minority of this child born out of wedlock, and named 
Emmanuel, simply because he was born in a time when 
the house of David was under trial ; and God seemed to 
favor them, just as we would express the same experience, 
saying God was with us. 

Passing to the second chapter of Matthew, we come to 
the story of the wise men from the East, and the butch- 
ery of children by Herod, both of which have the misfor- 
tune of colliding with facts. The fact of couphng these 
wise men from the East with a star gives a hint of the 
origin of the stor}', showing that it was of pagan origin, 
the intention being to represent these wise men as astrolo- 
gers, men of astral proclivities. The astronomers of their 
day "have seen his star in the east"; i.e, had discov- 
ered an omen in or by a certain star. Now all this reads 
well enough until it comes to say that the star came and 
stood over the place where the 3'oung child was. If any 
one wishes to locate a spot on the earth by following a 
star, let him try it. 



38 DOGMA OF IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 

But Luke says that these men were Jewish shepherds, 
keeping sheep in the same country ; they were not wise 
Pagans or Magi from the East at all, and such a thing as 
a star was never thought of. In fact, all they knew was 
sheep. If all the stars in the heavens were omens, they 
would not have been wiser for it. But " the angel of the 
Lord came upon them, and the glor\' of the Lord shone 
around them." Then the angel proclaims to them that a 
Saviour is born, tells them where to find Him, and what the 
sign would be ; and then there was a heavenly host ap- 
peared ; then the sheep-tenders went in haste to Bethle- 
hem, and found the case as stated, and then they published 
it abroad : while Matthew says the wise astral Pagans from 
the East departed another way, — being warned of God, 
they did not dare to publish it in Judea, — and also that 
Joseph took Christ and His mother and departed into 
Egypt. But Luke says they stayed in Bethlehem, and 
eight days tifter they circumcised Him ; and when He was 
sixty-six days old, they took Him to Jerusalem, right 
under Herod's nose, to offer the sacrifice according to the 
law of Moses (Lev. xii. 5). Here He was recognized 
bj' Simeon and Anna, both making a great ado over Him 
to the public, proclaiming Him the world's Saviour, noth- 
ing in the slightest being concealed for fear of Herod or 
any other man. " And when they had performed all 
things according to the law of the Lord, they returned 
into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth," where he started 
from, according to Luke ii. 4. But Matthew says they 
were in Egypt hiding from Herod all this time, and until 
they were informed that Herod was dead. Luke says their 
home was in Nazareth before they started to go the first 
time to be taxed, and that they stayed in Bethlehem at 



DOGMA OF IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 39 

least sixty-six days, then went to Jerusalem, and there 
openly and publicly performed the Mosaic rites, and then 
immediately departed to their own home, where they came 
from, their established residence in Nazareth ; and that 
they went from there once a year to Jerusalem, to the 
feast of the Passover. 

But Matthew says that when he returned into the land 
of Israel, he was afraid to return to his former home in 
Judea, for fear of Herod's son, who had come into power 
through the death of Herod ; and so he turned aside into 
Galilee, and incidentally went into Nazareth : never lived 
there before. Now Luke lived and died, and never heard 
that Herod killed any children on Christ's account; he 
never heard that Christ was run into Egypt for any pur- 
pose whatever ; he never heard that any wise pagan Magi 
or astrologers were led to Christ by a star. On the other 
hand, Matthew lived and died, and never heard that Joseph 
and his family were old residents of Nazareth, or that the}" 
went to Bethlehem to be taxed, or that they went to Jeru- 
salem about two months after the birth of Christ, and 
showed him publicly ; he never knew that a lot of ignorant 
sheep-herders had been encountered by a host from heaven 
and told how to find Christ, and that they published the 
information, or that Christ was never in danger of his 
life from Herod. Here is plenty of evidence that there 
was no collusion between these two witnesses ; if there 
had been, they could have gotten up a much more respecta- 
ble lie ; but as it now stands, it revolts the senses even of 
those that feel obliged to accept by faith that which is too 
evidently false to be passed through reason. But to con- 
tinue the investigation : Matthew says the killing of these 
children in Bethlehem fulfilled a prophecy spoken concern- 



40 DOGMA OF IMMACULATE CONCEPTlOJjq^. 

ing Rama. Looking on a map of Palestine, we see Rama 
about six miles directly north of Jerusalem, and Bethlehem 
is about as far directly south of Jerusalem ; so that killing 
children in Bethlehem has no connection whatever with 
Rama, and the prophecy has no reference to children in 
any sense except as national children, meaning people. It 
is in Jer. xxxi. 15, 16, 17: it simply describes a national 
calamity, where the Israelites have been carried away 
into captivity — not slaughtered ; as though this country 
should be invaded, and a large class of people carried off 
into captivity, and our poet Whittier, in writing a poetical 
lamentation, should say, "A voice in Baltimore, Columbia 
weeping for her children, and would not be comforted 
because they were not." And then comes the refrain, and 
a promise that the children (people) shall return again to 
their own border, — all of which was fulfilled centuries 
before Christ. History also shows Herod to have died at 
least two years before the birth of Christ, which fact has 
forced the Church, in order to keep the tradition good, to 
set the Christian era back four years ; but this is very poor 
policy, and weakens the cause more than it strengthens 
it, because it shows that if their early fathers, apostolic 
successors, and other antique infallibles are four years 
out of the way upon an event as important as the birth of 
the world's Saviour, they are just as liable to be four 
hundred per cent out of the way in their theology, which 
we think is about the sum of it. 

Matthew sa3's that Joseph's family were sent into Egypt 
to fulfil the prophecy of Hos. xi. 1, which reads thus: 
" When Israel was a child, I loved him, and called .my 
son out of Egypt." Turning to Ex. iv. 22, 23, we 
read, " And thou shall say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the 



DOGMA OF IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 41 

Lord, Israel is my son, and I say unto thee. Let my son 
go." This is all the prophec}' there is of this character. 
Like the prophecy concerning the children of Rama, it 
was spoken in a national sense, and had no reference to 
an individual. Matthew further says that when they re- 
turned out of Egypt they turned aside from their former 
residence in Judea, and came and dwelt in Nazareth, that 
it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, 
"He shall be called a Nazarene." There is no such 
prophecy in existence ; but, like all the other prophetic 
claims in this dogma of immaculate conception, they are 
the after-thoughts of ingenious conjurings, bearing no 
relation to the prophetic quotations applied to them. 

If the apostles had understood or believed this dogma, 
and seen the reputed miracles of Christ, and otherwise 
understood his character and mission in the same ligiit 
the Church does to-day, instead of bowing with Him in 
the attitude of divine worship, they would have prostrated 
themselves before Him, and worshipped, supplicated, 
praised, and adored Him, — a thing they never did, nor 
an}' one else, except in the sense of the general custom 
of saluting their superiors. But to-day, two-thirds of 
Christendom pray directly to Mary, and worship her, 
while the other third direct their prayers to her Son, and 
worship Him ; while God gets the cold shoulder. 

The difference between Christian Paganism and Con- 
fucian Paganism is, that while the Confucian Pagan feeds 
his god, the Christian Pagan eats his. The Confucian 
makes his of clay, and offers him food ; the Christian 
makes his of dough, and eats him. What a blessing it is 
to be civilized. 



42 THE DOCTKINE OF CHRIST. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 

The soul that conceives limitations to divine resources 
or ascribes to it failures, or imagines it can be brought 
into straits, or that it can be thwarted by any being, 
either man or devil, that soul is necessarily incased in its 
own little prison and shackled by the irons of its own 
diminutive conceptions. The person that can read that 
Christ ordered his disciples to gather up the fragments 
remaining after a certain picnic mentioned in John vi. 12, 
''that nothing be lost," showing such strict economy in 
the matter of a little bread and fish, and then believe, 
according to their creeds, that He has lost ninety-nine 
hundredths, or even one hundredth, of the human race, 
is a bigger fool than the idiot that thought the " moon no 
bigger than his father's shield, and the world circumfer- 
enced by the limitations of his natural vision." 

When we can size God up and place limitations upon 
Him, He becomes to us just the size of our limitations, 
and can never become larger to us until we remove those 
limitations. 

The office and mission of Christ was to remove all limi- 
tations and to liberate all captives from these narrow cells 
of human construction, out into the free air of God's bound- 
less universe. The instrument He used to accomplish the 
liberation was truth, which is the normal condition of 



THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 43 

liberty. Not that truth creates liberty, but it informs of 
the fact of its existence; ''The truth shall make you 
free " (John viii. 32). To have the truth is to be free ; to 
be freed by the truth is to be ''free indeed" (John \dii. 
36) ; i.e, absolutely free ; i.e. the truth will bring us into a 
knowledge of existing facts, and the very knowledge of 
those facts liberates thought from the bondage of formu- 
las. The facts were not created for our liberation by the 
introduction of any new principle ; they were always facts, 
and always will be facts ; their character is eternal ; they 
are attributes of God, and, like Him, never change ; i.e. 
God's attitude never changes in relation to man : whatever 
changes are effected are made on the part of the man. 
When a man's sins are forgiven, it is because the man 
has become so far cognizant of an eternal fact that he 
believes it to be so : he has no other evidence beyond his 
belief of it. So far the man has changed his relation to 
God, but God has not changed tovrards the man. On 
God's part the man never was otherwise than forgiven. 
In this sense, and this sense only, could Christ or any 
other man forgive sins, and that only by revealing the 
fact. "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob: neither 
hath he seen perverseness in Israel " (Num. xxiii. 21). If 
He had not seen it there, where in the world would He see 
it? And so with all the teachinos of Christ: He brouoht 
in no new conditions, but simply lighted up the old, or 
brought to light those things of an eternal and unchange- 
able character. When He said, " he that believeth in me 
hath eternal life," He meant no more than they that be- 
lieve what He tells them have eternal Hfe by the infor- 
mation, because the fact of life is contained in the 
knowledge imparted to them. 



44 THE DOCTRIKE OF CHKIST. 

"He that belie veth in me shall never taste death." 
Simply because He taught them that there is no death, 
that dissolution of the body is only a necessary incident 
in life's transformation from the lower to the higher order, 
and so he expressed what we term death by another term 
called sleep. 

The doctrines of Christ are clearly set forth in His Ser- 
mon on the Mount, in which immaculate conception, sub- 
stitutional righteousness, vicarious atonement, and trinit}^ 
gods are absolutely ignored. He does not honor one of 
these doctrines with even a hint of them in this grand old 
discourse, which was a golden opportunity lost if these 
dogmas are true ; and, indeed, Christ threw away a score 
of such opportunities as recklessly as though they were not 
of sufficient importance to mention. He missed one of 
those opportunities when one of the scribes asked Him 
which was the first or greatest commandment of all (Mark 
xii. 28) ; "And Jesus answered him. The first of all the 
commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is 
one Lord" (Mark xii. 29). Now here was a criminal 
neglect to tell the people that this God was constituted 
in three parts, of which He was the second part, and 
that a spook constituted the third part. He also over- 
looked a grand opportunity to divulge this curiosity in 
his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. 
When He informed her that she knew not what she wor- 
shipped (John IV. 22), and then proceeded to instruct her 
what to worship, and tells her that " God is spirit, and 
they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in 
truth," He mentioned nothing to her about worshipping a 
Son or a Ghost, and yet these things to-day are the ortho- 
dox essentials to salvation. Why did he neglect ever to 



THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 45 

mention any of these things in any case? " Echo answers, 
Why?- 

He says that one jot or tittle of the law shall in no wise 
pass till it be fulfilled, and that He came to fulfil the law. 
There is but one possible way in which he can fulfil that 
law, and that is, by bringing every son and daughter of 
Adam up to meet its requirements. 

''Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least 
commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called 
the least in the kingdom of heaven." Just exactly what 
the Church has been doing all through the dispensation, 
breaking these commandments, and teaching men that they 
cannot be saved by their own personal righteousness, but 
by a substituted righteousness. But He says, "Except 
your [own personal, if you please] righteousness exceed 
the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall 
in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." Right- 
eousness in us, then, is here made the basis of salvation, 
and this principle is nowhere changed in the teachings of 
Christ, except it is changed by the accommodation of our 
kind pagan ancestors. 

There is not a particle of the doctrine of eternal pun- 
ishment in the Sermon on the Mount, nor in any teaching 
of Christ, except it is there by the palpable hand of 
Paganism. It speaks in Matt. v. 22 of being ''in dan- 
ger of the Gehenna of fire," a place symbolizing the 
process of purifying, and never of punishing (margin 
New Version) ; then in the same chapter, twenty-fifth 
verse, " Agree with thine adversary, lest finally thou be 
cast into prison. Thou shalt by no means come out 
thence until thou hast paid the utmost farthing," which 
implies that there is a limit, and that limit is regulated to 



46 THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 

an equation of justice, and that when that last farthing is 
settled in penalty or what not, liberation will take place. 

But the glory of this mountain discourse is the gospel 
(good news) of it, which consists in the revelation of the 
process tlirough which the law will be fulfilled. The 
medium by which that fulfilment will be accomplished is 
love, which is the fulfilling of the law (Rom. xiii. 10). 

" Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good 
to them that hate you, that you may be the children of 
your Father which is in heaven. Therefore be ye per- 
fect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect " 
(Matt. V. 44 to 48). We see here that the children of 
God are constituted in this disposition of love, and not 
in a vicarious atonement ; and that the result of the action 
of the love motive is divine perfection, and it is this 
motive when consummated that will fulfil all law and 
accomplish all prophetic fulfilments. " Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, and mind, and 
thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments 
hang all the law and the prophets " (Matt. xxii. 40) . 
These two commandments are the summing up of that 
which is to be accomplished before one jot or tittle can 
pass away. 

This disposition is the true and only redemptive force 
in the world. When one is imbued with this spirit, he 
fulfils all law by being so much better than the law that 
he is above it. The law cannot reach him, because it is 
not in his sphere ; it would be a superfluous appendage to 
such a condition. 

" God is love ; he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in 
God, and God in him " (1 John iv. 16). 

" Beloved, let us love one another : for love is of God, 



THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 47 

and every one that loveth [universally] is born of God 
and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not 
God : for God is love " (1 John iv. 7, 8). 

'' There is no fear in love ; but perfect love easteth out 
fear. He that feareth is not made perfect in love'' 
(1 John iv. 18). 

These texts from the hands of the disciples of Christ 
show the line of discipline their tuition had been given 
on, and unfold to us the purpose of their Instructor to 
develop in them this divine character, which constitutes 
them sons of God. 

" God is love." Love is not an attribute of God. As 
the ocean is water, so God is love. Water is not an attri- 
bute of the ocean ; it is the ocean itself. Love is not an 
attribute of God ; it is God Himself, and God is love. 
There are many attributes of the ocean, such as salt, 
lime, iodine, phosphorus, and a thousand other virtues ; 
but the water is the ocean itself. There are many attri- 
butes of God, such as justice, virtue, purity, order, and 
a thousand others ; but love is God, and compasses, 
moves, distributes, and controls all the attributes ; and 
this is wherein love fulfils law : it absorbs all law and all 
other virtues into itself. They are so many messengers 
to do love's bidding. 

Christ sought to awaken in the finite mind the con- 
sciousness of the divine paternit}' and universal presence, 
and to connect the incentive force of divine energy to 
the motor of finite action, to fix the purpose of life in the 
law of love. 

To accomplish this purpose it required no supernatural 
demonstration by any man, or any unnatural interference 
by the Deity with the established order of natural laws ; 



48 THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 

but to the contrary, the time had come for a new depart- 
m-e, when the worlds great ruling systems should be 
founded upon eternal facts and built up with the honest 
truth, so exactly in harmony with the divine established 
order of natural working principles that no power could 
ever remove them. 

Heretofore every system, religious or secular, had been 
founded upon old wives' fables of lying wonders and bug- 
bear stories, and perhaps none of them more so than the 
Jewish system with its mixed mass of pagan sophistry, 
Jewish fables, and honest prophetic inspiration, inter- 
spersed with a few other facts, but lying enough mixed 
into the whole mass to nullifj^ any personal obligation to 
believe any of it. "Ye have made the w^ord of God of 
none effect by your traditions." 

Christ therefore determined to have none of the old 
curiosity show of marvels and monstrosities in His build- 
ing. How well He succeeded in keeping them out the 
New Testament will show ; but that they are there is not 
by any fault of His, as He did not write nor authorize the 
New Testament, neither did His immediate disciples, only 
certain parts, which were made use of b}* Paganism as 
the hermit crab often steals the beautiful shells of other 
fish to conceal its own deformity in. 

The fact should be patent to every one, of the useless- 
ness of these accompaniments to the truth. In the first 
place, the improbable character of them would always 
preclude a large per cent of the best intellects from ever 
believing them, which would otherwise readily assent to 
the reasonableness of truth if it was unaccompanied by 
these questionable witnesses. In the next place, such is 
the tendency of man to falsify that it would be absolutely 



THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 49 

necessary to repeat these miracles by ocular demonstra- 
tion to every generation and before all classes, to make 
the responsibilit}' of belief in them of any binding force. 
If we are under moral obligation to believe one class of 
improbable stories from one sect, then we are under the 
same obligation to believe all classes of improbable stories 
from all sects. But as we scoff at every other form of 
pagan marvels simply upon the ground of their absurdity, 
we are under moral obligations to apply the same rule to 
the Christian marvels, unless we have discovered some 
rule by which we can discriminate between what we 
know is a lie by the looks of it, and that which looks 
just like the lie we know by the looks of it. 

And besides all this, these marvels are a great hindrance 
to the development of divine truths, as they tend to de- 
velop superstition, fanaticism, and doubt ; ^.e. doubt in 
everything in the legitimate line, unless it is witnessed by 
some -freak. 

The God-given intelligence in man is a thousand times 
better off without the aid of these monstrosities than with 
them, and is entirely competent to develop into the proper 
understanding of the divine relation with proper teaching 
without ocular demonstration from Heaven to certify 
divine authority. 

Christ, therefore, had the disadvantage of introducing 
unpopular methods in seeking to inaugurate His new and 
objectionable system into the world. Everj'body clamored 
for the old time-honored and universally approved methods 
of inaugurating new religious systems, '* Show us a sign." 
Moses did marvels, worked miracles, showed wonders to 
the people. " What sign shewest thou unto us?" Here 
was a graphic illustration of the baneful effects resulting 



60 THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 

from the belief in antiquated marvels. There is no doubt 
but the Israelites successfully planned and carried out a 
scheme to steal away from their Egyptian oppressors in 
the night. Their own account agrees that they left at 
midnight, in great haste. Once away from their tormen- 
tors, by favorable circumstances they succeeded in eluding 
their pursuers. If, indeed, the Egyptians pursued them 
at all, it is very evident that their efforts at recapturing 
the Israelites were very feeble. The Israelites had become 
a hardy, athletic race as a result of their habits. Even 
their ' ' women were delivered of their children without the 
aid of mid wives or doctors." While, on the other hand, 
the Egyptians had grown eft'eminate for vrant of the 
same exercise that had made the Israelites strong. 
As long as the Egyptians kept the Israelites at home, 
they could control them ; but when once they had es- 
caped, and got into the open country, the Egyptians, 
knowing well their physical prowess and the despera- 
tion with which they would fight for liberty, very wisely 
withdrew and left them to themselves ; while the Israel- 
ites proceeded on and became a nation of tramps, for- 
aging their living off the countries through which they 
passed, until finally they succeeded in conquering a weak 
nation, driving them out of their own country, and taking 
possession by the right of might. And no doubt but all 
these improbable Mother Goose stories of Moses and 
Aaron, miracles in the presence of Pharaoh, and other 
fables, were afterthoughts fabricated to establish a national 
religion, which must be of sufficient importance to com- 
mand the respect of the rest of the world's religious 
liars, and also to have an effect at home. And now 
witness the fruits of it in the unbelieving Jew, who has 



THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 51 

become wholly unfitted to receive truth upon its own 
merits, when it commends itself, by its rationalism, to 
every faculty of a divine character in our nature. 

As Christ said, the fruit proves the tree ; then this fruit 
emphatically proves the fallacy of those old-time state- 
ments of supernatural demonstrations. 

But how much better off is the Christian with his lying 
wonders ? 

But to every demand for signs, Christ emphatically re- 
plied, "No; ' there shall no sign be given.'" And He 
kept that promise to the end. That denial implied that 
the truth should be taken upon its naked merits, or not 
at all. Consequently He never performed the following 
signs of turning water into wine, raising the son of the 
widow of Nain from the dead, transferring devils from 
man into hogs, or raising Lazarus from the dead after 
he had been dead four days, or any other miracles re- 
corded of Him, any one of which would be as great a 
sign as any that are recorded of Moses and Aaron. And 
the act of raising the dead would be a greater sign than 
was ever recorded, and more than any one ever asked or 
expected, and the man never lived who would be unrea- 
sonable enough to ask a greater sign than this. And it 
is no use to deny that these things were signs ; the very 
language of the Bible calls them signs. Speaking of the 
miracle of turning water into wine, John is made to say, 
*' these beginnings of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Gali- 
lee" (John ii. 11, New Version). 

So Christ was obliged to accept what few converts to 
His doctrines could be made by the simple teaching of 
the truth as it commended itself to their consciousuess 
as a correct and divinely approved code of principles. 



62 THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 

The result was, His church grew very slowly until after it 
went to Rome to convert the heathen, where it lost its 
identity in the sea of Paganism, and finally emerged a 
full-fledged Pagan, with a few Christian attachments. 
That was the location where the truth was cast down to 
the ground, spoken of by Dan. viii. 12. It was there the 
tares were sown among the wheat spoken of in Christ's 
parable of the Wheat and Tares (Matt. xiii. 25). It was 
there the signs and lying wonders were fabricated, spoken 
of by Paul (2 Thess. ii. 9), which consist in the reputed 
miracles of Christy after this piece of pagan strategy was 
accomplished, adapting the style of the religion to the 
fable-loving masses, with their itching ears for wonders 
and marvels, to whom the plain, unadorned truth had no 
charm, The Church grew ver}- rapidly, and has now 
become that great house referred to by Christ in His 
Sermon on the Mount, whose base is founded in sand ; 
and she is about ready to topple over, as every kind of a 
storm is beating against her with hourly increasing vehe- 
mence, and she is in the same fix her Jewish ancestors 
were when their reformer appeared amongst them eigh- 
teen centuries ago, when their minds were so imbued with 
the fables of their early fathers that they had no room for 
the progressive truth of their time, and could not receive it. 
Neither can the Christian Church to-day receive it, for 
exactly the same reason : her early fathers have, like their 
Jewish predecessors, supplied their own afterthoughts to 
embellish original truth, and the resulting fruit is spoiled 
children. The pure, unalloyed truth is now fast pressing 
into the world, demanding recognition ; but these sons of 
fables (or, as Christ called the Jews, '' children of the 
devil " — John viii. 44) cannot receive it, because it neces- 



THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 63 

sitates the removing of the fables upon which their whole 
structure is based. You cannot put new wine into old 
bottles. It will be objected that the so-called early Church 
could not be guilty of formulating such blasphemies ; but 
when we consider that formulating blasphemies has con- 
stituted her specialty throughout her long career, these 
objections fall to the ground. If she can fabricate the 
dogma of the infallibility of a man, as we know she did, 
if she can invent the dogma that a woman was miracu- 
lously conceived, as we know she did, then there is no 
earthly barrier to her having formulated that other dogma 
of the immaculate conception of Christ, and all the train 
of lying wonders following it. 

Whether Rome formulated these wonders of falsehood 
in her councils, or whether she collected them from vari- 
ous sources and canonized them, it matters not. It is 
certain that she assumed to settle the canonicity of them ; 
and those she condemned as apocryphal have as strong 
claim to common sense as those rejected. It is as plausi- 
ble that Christ made mud birds when a boy and changed 
them to living ones, as that He converted water to wine 
when a man ; and the act is much more creditable, when 
we consider the overwhelming curse of the wickedness in 
wine. 

The power that claims the following blasphemous pre- 
rogatives, — and these only samples of hundreds of similar 
claims by the same power, all of more or less import 
than these, — has no restrictions in heaven, earth, or hell. 
It is possessed of no conscience, and cannot be terrified 
into anything like restraint from performing any act that 
an important policy might invite. 

" I am all in all and above all, so that God Himself and 



64 THE DOCTRIKE OF CHEIST. 

I, the vicar of God, have both one consistory ; and I am 
able to do almost all that God can do, in all things that 
I list ; my will is to stand for reason, for I am able by the 
law to dispense above the law, and of wrong to make 
justice in making laws and changing them. 

''Wherefore, if those things that I do be said to be 
done, not of man, but of God, what can you make of me 
but God? Again, if prelates of the Church be called and 
counted of Constantine for gods, I, then, being above 
all prelates, seem by this reason to be above all gods. 

" Wherefore, no marvel, if it be in my power to change 
time and times, to alter and abrogate laws, to dispense 
with all things, yea, with the precepts of Christ ; for 
where Christ biddeth Peter put up his sword and admon- 
ishes His disciples not to use any outward force in reveng- 
ing themselves, do not I, Pope Nicholas, writing to the 
bishops of France, exhort them to draw out their material 
swords?" "And whereas Christ was present Himself 
at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, do not I, Pope Martin, 
in my distinction, inhibit the spiritual clergy to be present 
at marriage feasts, and also to marry? Moreover, where 
Christ biddeth lend without hope of gain, do not I, Pope 
Martin, give dispensation for the same? What should 
I speak of murder, making it to be no murder or homicide 
to slay them that be excommunicated ; likewise against 
the law of nature, item against the Apostles, also against 
the canons of the Apostles, I can and do dispense ; or 
where they in their canon command a priest for fornica- 
tion to be deposed, I, through the authorit}' of Sylvester, 
do alter the rigor of that constitution, considering the 
minds and bodies also of men now to be weaker than 
they were then." 



THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 55 

'' If ye list briefly to hear the whole number of all such 
cases as properly do appertain to my Papal dispensation, 
which come to the number of one and fifty points, that no 
man may meddle with but only I myself alone, I w^ill recite 
them : The Pope doth canonize, and none else but be ; his 
sentence makes a law ; he is able to abolish laws, both civil 
and canon ; to erect new religions ; to approve or re- 
prove rules or ordinances and ceremonies in the Church ; 
he is able to dispense with all the precepts and statutes 
of the Church. The same is also free from all laws, so 
that he cannot incur any sentence of excommunication, 
suspension, irregularity," etc., etc. 

These are a few samples of the claims maintained 
by the infallible representatives of the infallible Church, 
which prove conclusively that no scruples ever crossed 
her path to the inauguration of all the marvellous tales 
recorded in the New Testament. 

Paganism wanted miracles to substantiate the claims to 
a new form of idolatry, and she forged them ; that is the 
long and short of it. 

The modern religion of Mormonism wanted a revelation 
from Heaven, and they forged it ; and thus we have be- 
fore our own eyes, inaugurated in our own day, a sample 
of how every new religious system on earth has been 
started, with the exception of the teachings of Christ be- 
fore they became perverted, showing from what a small 
nucleus a falsehood can start, and what dimensions it can 
grow to ; it shows that a falsehood can originate with an 
individual, pass to a second and third person, and so on 
to a multitude ; become incorporated into a constitution ; 
grow to be a national, and from that to an international 
institution, and become a great, universal lie. We can 



66 THE DOCTKINE OF CHKIST. 

see that in the Mormons, whose numbers embrace but a 
few thousands. We can see it in the Mohammedan religion, 
which embraces one hundred and forty millions. We can 
see it in- Paganism, embracing nearl}^ seven hundred mil- 
lions ; but cannot see it in Christianity, embracing a little 
over three hundred millions. We would like to cast the 
mote of superstition out of these heathen eyes, so they 
could see the fabulous character of their traditions ; but 
the beam of superstition in our own eyes carries so much 
greater weight of traditional falsehood than theirs, it is 
inconsistent to ask them to dispense with theirs while we 
cling to our own. To rid the whole world of this mass of 
superstitious encumbrance was the great purpose of Christ ; 
to deliver Israel first, and through them the rest of the 
race : but the Jewish idolatry rejected Him ; and as His 
doctrines spread into pagan lands and threatened its ex- 
tinction, that subtle power, seeing its danger, pretends 
to embrace Christianity, but instead she absorbs it into 
herself, like the embrace of the devil-fish, where the life 
of the victim is lost in the embrace. The doctrines Christ 
taught concerning his own person were representative of 
the race. Whatever relationship He claimed to God, He 
claimed it as a son of man, and none of them as ex- 
clusive ; i.e. He never claimed to be the only begotten 
Son of God (that is the pagan attachment) ; but in repre- 
senting the universal relationship of man to the Deity, He 
calls himself a Son of God, but in a more especial sense 
than others, in that He had come to a consciousness of 
that relation and lived up to the consistency of that con- 
sciousness. 

When the Jews took up stones to stone Him because 
of the supposed blasphemy. He quoted this Scripture to 



i 



THE DOCTKINE OF CHRIST. 57 

them, ''Is it not written in your law, I said ye are gods?^' 
Then he says, ''If he called them gods, unto whom the 
word of God came,'' thus allowing and supporting the 
position by quotation that other men beside Himself were 
entitled to be called gods, even more than He claimed to 
be ; for nowhere did He ever claim that appellation with- 
out the quaUfication of sonship or heir. The apostles 
being thus taught, soon learned that they were sons of 
God, and made bold to declare it. 

Says John, " Now are we sons of God, and it doth not 
yet appear what we shall be " (the apostle here evidently 
anticipating some higher revelation as their understanding 
should advance); continuing, he says, "But when he 
shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him 
as he is." This text explains the whole position as the 
apostle understood it. To see and understand Christ's 
position was what was to determine our own, and when 
our understanding should reveal Him as He really is, 
"When he shall appear," i.e. when the truth shall be 
apparent to our consciousness. His relative identity will 
be our own, " because as he is, so are we in this world" 
(1 John iv. 17). 

Paul also carries out the same idea (Acts xvii. 28, 29), 
as he says, "Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of 
God." Christ also implies the same in the Lord's Prayer, 
teaching us to call God " our Father." 

Addressing the disciples at another time. He says, 
"My God and your God, my Father and your Father," 
making no distinction between His and our relation to 
God. He disclaimed being any part of God in a different 
relation from other people. He says, "I can of mine 
own self do nothing " (John v. 30) ; neither can any one. 



58 THE DOCTRINE OF CHBIST. 

We could neither breathe, nor exist of ourselves. ^' My 
Father is greater than I " (John xiv. 28). This language 
goes to show that because He claims sonship He does not 
claim equality, exactly like all the rest of humanity. 
Although they are all God's offspring, children of God, 
their Godship is limited ; and unless Christ's Godship was 
also limited, the Father could not be greater than He. So 
the language implies limitations. And so in all His 
teaching He claims no difference in kind to the rest of 
humanity, but only in degree. And so, reader, Daniel 
Webster was not different from you in kind, but probably 
was in degree, but even that degree had a limit. 

Upon these principles of equal powers of advantage 
and disadvantage He invites the rest of mankind to over- 
come, as He overcame. But if He was God, and had no 
sin, then He overcame nothing : and we are men, and full 
of sin ; we must overcome everything. Such an invitation 
under such circumstances would simply amount to insult. 
To ask a man, to whom all the odds of the prevailing power 
of sin, of hell and of devils is against, to run a race on 
an equal footing with God, to whom the race is assured 
by the security of the divine impossibility of failure 
before the start; who has no sin or disposition to sin, 
nothing to overcome, nothing to encumber Him in the 
race ; who has reached the finishing stakes before He 
starts ; who has omnipotence as an equal holder of al- 
mighty power with God Himself, — to invite a man to run 
a race under such infinitely unequal conditions is explain- 
able only upon the hypothesis of the obtuseness of pagan 
theology. 

He nowhere taught that righteousness could be substi- 
tuted for unrighteousness, or that sin could be bought and 



THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 59 

paid for. A purchased sinner is a sinner still. Substi- 
tuting a good man for a bad man doesn't make tlie bad 
man good. 

When John said of Christ, '' Behold : the lamb of God 
that taketh away the sin of the world," he did not mean 
that He takes it away by substitution or judicial act, but 
by His teaching, which makes the result a positive fact, 
instead of being reckoned so when it is not so. Remov- 
ing sin by vicarious sacrifice does not remove it, but 
leaves it just as it was. Reckoning sin to be righteous- 
ness from any motive is not fact, but falsehood. It is 
not honest, but dishonest. It is stating for a considera- 
tion that which is not true. 

The claim of Christ that He and the Father were one 
was based upon the fact of His having come into con- 
sciousness of that oneness by harmonious action, and He 
prayed and labored for others to come into the same con- 
dition. " I in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you" 
(John xiv. 20). "As thou. Father, art in me, and I 
in thee, that they also may be one in us." Where is the 
barrier to the true Christian saying, I and my father are 
one, if these words count for anything? And again. 
He allows the same relative position of others to God 
that He claims for Himself, when He says, "The words 
that I speak unto you I speak not of myself, but the 
Father that dwelleth in me" (John xiv. 10). Again, to 
the disciples he says, " It is not ye that speak, but the 
spirit of your Father which speaketh in you" (Matt. x. 
20) . Now, here is one and the same principle, speaking 
through both Christ and the apostles. Allowing the 
difference in degree by which He was farther advanced 
than they, Christ claimed to speak continually from this 



60 THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 

inward divine principle. Speaking, then, from this divine 
principle, and as He claimed not to speak Himself, but 
the Father within him. He says, '' Before Abraham was, I 
am." Where is the barrier to the disciples, speaking from 
the same inner consciousness of tlie Divine Presence, say- 
ing, ^' Before Abraham was, I am " ? What purpose could 
there be in giving that signification to the name of the 
Deity, except to instruct mankind in the fact that they 
are embraced in the realm of Deity ; that all manifest 
appearances are motions or expressions of Deity? All 
names claimed to be given by inspiration were given be- 
cause of what they signified. What, then, does '' I am" 
signify, except that it expresses hy this application to the 
Deity what Paul expressed when he said, '' God is all, and 
in all." We cannot repeat the name, and leave ourselves 
out. When we say, ''I am," we express all there is of 
Deity, ourselves included. Every ounce of matter, every 
spark of intelligence, every infinitesimal microbe, every 
interatomic vapor, and every planetary system circling 
through space are stamped with its impress. Ask any of 
these things, ask the child and the aged who or what is 
their identity, and there can be but one answer, " I am." 
And yet they are not so many ''I am's," but so many fea- 
tures to the great ''I am," who is the Author and present 
Causation, or the ''I am" of our existence. Remove that 
''I am" (being), and it removes us. There would be no 
personal '' I am" " left to tell the tale." Science declares 
that all matter is eternal ; for by the law of cause and effect, 
things cannot be created from nothing. This law applies 
with equal force to mind that it does to matter. Though 
matter is eternal, forms are not. All intelligence is 
eternal, and existed before form. It existed before Abra- 



THE DOCTRINE OP CHRIST. 61 

ham was formed. Man did not bring intelligence into 
the world. Intelligence brought him in. Man creates 
no new ideas : he gathers them out of the universal store 
of material. No new idea can be gathered from either 
substance or principle that was not first laid in the fact 
of their existence. We cannot create facts ; we can only 
gather them. If the elements were not full of the con- 
stituents of physical life, there could be no material life ; 
for the reason you cannot draw life out of nothing. The 
same principle is true of the mental element. There could 
be no intelligence, were there not the constituents of it in 
the universe. Formerly we were dependent upon matter 
for light and heat, but now we receive both from the 
invisible world ; and it is said that bread can be produced 
direct from the elements, without waiting for the slow 
process of vegetation. Science (not religion) has pene- 
trated the holy place where is kept the bread and light of 
life independent of the world of matter. 

It is the mental capacity tliat has penetrated this inte- 
rior thus far and demonstrated the fact of its discoveries. 
This high priest in men's nature is the only party that can 
enter the realm beyond matter and bring forth specimens 
of its explorations. 

We have the strongest inferential evidence that He will 
yet penetrate the second vail into the holy of holies, and 
discover the realm of intelligence independent of matter. 
It may not be able to present an ocular demonstration, 
but we have no doubt that evidences corresponding to the 
nature of the case will occur that will be conclusive. 

This penetration is not by process of any religious for- 
mulas, but by the strait and narrow path of scientific 
truth which is laid in the eternal foundation of immutable 



62 THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 

laws, and not in the judicial virtue of a dogmatical mon- 
strosity. 

Man has no material intelligence ; he is only a receiver 
and conductor, like the lightning-rod that is prepared to 
receive and conduct the lightning, or the carbon that 
receives and expresses or demonstrates to the senses 
the presence of the electricity by the presence of the 
spark. And this is true of all animate and inanimate 
natm'e : everything expresses just the amount of intelli- 
gence that its capacity as an intelligence, agent, or con- 
ductor will allow. There was just as much intelligence 
before man was formed as there is now ; there never has 
or ever will be more or less. The new-born child brings 
no intelUgence into the world ; he knows less than an 
oyster : but he develops and grows by the intelligence 
that was here before he came, until he arrives at his full 
capacity as an intelligence-receiver ; then, like any old 
machine, he begins to run down, until at last his entire 
capacity for conducting intelligence ceases, and he goes 
out the same as he came in, — having brought no intelligence 
into the world or carried any out. Whoever has been bet- 
tered by him was benefited by the proper use he made 
of the intelligence which passed through him as a con- 
ductino; ao;ent. 

This intelligence is the "I am." Any man speaking in 
this capacity can say, ''Before Abraham was, I am." If 
Christ had been speaking Himself of Himself, when He 
said, "Before Abraham was, I am," it would not have been 
true ; but He said He spake not Himself nor of Himself, 
but the Father that dwelleth in Him. We believe this 
position to be one of those higher conditions of conscious- 
ness to which John looked forward, but could not then 



THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 63 

understand what it would be, when he said, ''Now are 
we sons of God, but it doth not yet appear what we shall 
be." By the inference from this language it is plain that 
he looked forward to a time when human conception should 
take a step higher in the consciousness of its relation to 
the Eternal Universal, the Divine Intelligence. Christ says 
it cannot be observed, for " it is within you." Paul says, 
" It is not above or below," ^.e. it is nowhere beyond us, 
but '' in thy heart and in thy mouth" ; i.e. conceived in 
the heart and expressed by the mouth. This is the prin- 
ciple of pre-existence. 

But, says one, He speaks of the "glory he had with 
the Father before the world began " (John xvii. 5) . Yes, 
but He says, " God gave it to him" ; that is, opened it up 
to His consciousness (verse 22), and also {ibid.) that He 
had given the same to the disciples ; i.e. opened it up to 
their consciousness. If God gave it to Him, then there 
was a time when He did not have it ; and concerning the 
phraseology, that He had it before the foundation of the 
world, the same language is used in regard to His fol- 
lowers. It says they '' were chosen before the foundation 
of the world" (Eph. i. 4). It also says, ''His grace 
was given us before the world began" (2 Tim. i. 9, 10). 

Now, the natural inferences deducible from these texts 
is, that these things were lodged and had an existence in 
the Divine Intelligence always : God never thinks of a 
new thing; a new thought never occurs to Him. What- 
ever occurs a trillion years hence is a part of the Divine 
Intelligence now, and always has been. If there are be- 
ings to be glorified or given glory in a quintillion years 
hence, that glory is with the Father now, and He knows 
as much about it now as He will then. Whoever receives 



64 THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 

glory in that remote future will receive the glory they had 
with Him now ; i,e, both they and the glory are as much 
in the Divine Intelligence to-day as they will be then. 
Opening it up to their consciousness is another thing. 
We understand that the glory that Christ had with the 
Father before the world began was contained in the Divine 
Mind, and that Christ received it or became conscious of 
it in His natural life, just the same as the apostles became 
conscious of theirs after He had given it to them ; i.e, 
taught it to them. 

To the claims that He was God, and all things were 
made by Him (John i. 3, 10; Eph. iii. 9; Col. i. 16; 
Heb. i. 2), we will answer: First, by Himself, that no 
such claim by Himself is recorded ; as though He were 
too modest to speak of it Himself, and others had to say 
it for Him. Secondly, the New Testament is divisible into 
two parts. All through one part is Christ ; and the other 
part is pagan, or Antichrist. The Christ part all agrees 
in perfect harmony with itself, while it disagrees entirely 
with the pagan part ; while the pagan part accords per- 
fectly with itself, but discords always with the Christ 
part. And by this rule the two parts can be separated : 
all the constituents to each part will join its own affinit}'. 
We shall use but one of these texts to illustrate the sham 
of the whole (Col. i. 16). "For by him were all things 
created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible 
and invisible ; whether they be thrones, or dominions, or 
principalities, or powers, all things were created by him 
and for him." 

Opposed to this stands the text which says He was 
tempted with the offer of the kingdoms of this world, and 
all the glory of them, providing He would accept their 



THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. 66 

principalities, and indorse tlieir principles as being cor- 
rect ; or, in other words, would worship the Devil : which 
offer he indignantly rejected. Now, only one of these 
opposites are true. He either did not make these thrones, 
dominions, principalities, and powers, or else He did not 
reject His own work. The fact appears here that Christ 
was emphatically opposed to the unjust principles npon 
which governments and principalities were carried on ; 
hence He had nothing to do about making them or the 
world. As for pre-existence. He had the same that all 
men and all things have. All things are eternal so far as 
the raw material is concerned. Changes of form and 
condition are always going on. The particles that consti- 
tute our bodies came from the four quarters of the globe. 
A hundred years ago no two atoms of them were together, 
neither will they be a hundred years hence ; 3^et none of 
them were out of existence, or ever will be. No intelli- 
gence is increased or diminished by the coming and going 
of man or any other animal. They come, and make use 
of whatever amount their capacity will admit, and go, and 
leave it as they found it. A son implies a beginning. 
Father and son cannot be co-eternal ; that which has a 
beginning can never be eternal. Nothing can by any 
possibility enter eternity ; for eternity runs back as well 
as forward. To exist in all the future would only be 
to possess the little end of eternity, because the future 
could never get to equal the past ; because the past never 
had a starting-point, while the future starts from any- 
thing that couples it to data or that has a beginning. 

But, to sum up the whole matter, the doctrine of Christ 
was to save the world, and the whole of it, by leading it 
up out of its erroneous thought into truth which leads to 
divinity. 



66 THE DOCTRIJ^E OF CHRIST. 

The world has, by the law of accretion, so far gathered 
to itself whatever it has of intellectual progress out of the 
universe, but it is far from maturity yet. 

There are no lost arts ; they are all held in suspension 
in the realm of universal intelligence, and can again be 
separated from the mass, ruled into formulas, and sensi= 
tized to the control of intellectual force. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 67 



CHAPTER V. 

PROPHECY OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

How many Christians are there who recognize the 
prophetic character of the Decalogue ? 

Yet the prophet Isaiah declares that God's word " shall 
not return to him void, but it shall prosper in that where- 
unto it was sent" (Is. Iv. 11). And Christ declares that 
" one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the law until 
all be fulfilled" (Matt. v. 18). 

This dual assurance from the Old and New Testaments 
of the Law's final triumph implies that its character is 
prophetic of the final accomplishment of that which it 
demands of the race, and assures us that the coming man 
will fill up the margin of legal requirements to the 
standard of divine approbation. 

Omnipotence does not give off words of command 
and leave the result optional with man. His word itself 
is the assurance of its own accomplishment. 

How few nominal Christians ever think of the Lord's 
Prayer as being prophetic ! As though Christ set all the 
world to praying for that which never would nor ever 
could come to pass ! 

When the disciples asked Him to formulate a prayer 
for them, He dictated to them a very appropriate form, 
locating its requests along the line of prophecy, that they 
might be in harmony with the Divine Will and receive 



68 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

that which the}' asked for. Consequently the prophetic 
assurance in that prayer is, that God's will is going to be 
done on the earth as it is in heaven. When that is con- 
summated, poverty will have been abolished upon the earth ; 
for there are no poor in heaven, because it is not His will ; 
and when the prophecy of that prayer is fulfilled, then 
there will be no poor upon the earth, for the same reason. 

The golden rule is another of those grand old promises 
in prophetic precept that when once revealed, like a newly 
discovered star, will ever after hold its place in the firma- 
ment of universal intelligence, and will continue to shine 
until its divine rays shall penetrate the darkest recesses 
of all hearts, and absorb all human motives into its own 
divine expresssion, '' Do unto others as you would they 
should do unto you." 

But the prophecy contained in the Sermon on the 
Mount, comprising the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters 
of Matthew, is the most important to this generation, of 
all other prophecies, for the reason that it deals directly 
with us, and our dispensational destinies are written there. 
It has the appearance of having been the least tampered 
with by pagan revisers of any writing in the New Testa- 
ment. It contains a complete plan of salvation, without 
the pagan accompaniments of immaculate conception, 
vicarious atonement, proxy righteousness, eternal torment, 
and a triune God : every one of these dogmatic devices 
are flatly denied by the uncompromising truths laid down 
in the Sermon on the Mount in the following order : — 

First. The law standard sustained and honored by ful- 
filment, and will not by any means be lowered until- the 
race comes up to fill its requirements (Matt. v. 18). 

Second. Personal righteousness the only price current 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 69 

in the kingdom of God (Matt. v. 20). It is the con- 
stitution of the kingdom, ''for the kingdom of God is 
righteousness resulting in peace and joy" (Rom. xiv. 17). 

Third. Divine perfection is attained through love 
(Matt. V. 38-48 inclusive). "Love is the fulfilling of 
the law'' (Rom. xiii. 10; Matt. xxii. 40; Gal. v. 14; 
1 John iv. 8). Justice is an attribute to the kingdom, 
but love is the kingdom itself (1 John iv. 7, 8). To love 
God with all the heart, and thy neighbor as thyself, is the 
diameter and circumference of salvation (Matt. xxii. 40). 

Fourth. God the Father the only proper being to 
address in prayer (Matt. vi. 9), who alone constitutes the 
Godhead (Mark xii. 29). 

Fifth. The golden rule, the multitm in parvo of religion, 
the sole and eternal condition of salvation, and only 
entrance to paradise ; it is the only medium of exchange 
and purchasing power with God, and is not transferable 
(Matt. vii. 12, 21). 

Sixth. Retribution limited to an equation of justice 
(Matt. v. 26) ; which is the bed-rock bottom beneath the 
throne of God. To remove that is to divide the kingdom 
of heaven against itself, and destroy it ; for the law of the 
disintegration of kingdoms applies with equal force to 
the kingdom of God and of the devil ; hence, to intro- 
duce one principle of injustice into the kingdom of God, 
would be just as disastrous to it as it would be in 
Satan's kingdom to cast out devils by Beelzebub, the 
prince of devils, as the law which constitutes either king- 
dom is based in the principles which characterize them. 

It is evident from the infinite scope of principles pre- 
sented in this discourse, that Christ gave a full and com- 
plete exposition of His whole doctrines in it, relative to 



70 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

the redemption of the race ; but through some oversight 
of our early Roman fathers, they have accidentally been 
left comparatively pure, and they form a correct standard 
by which to correct the whole New Testament. 

Many of the precepts and promises of Christ were 
spoken in a national or governmental sense, and could not 
possibly be fulfilled on a personal basis, unless it was in 
universal practice; such as ''seek first his kingdom and 
his righteousness, and all these things shall be added 
unto you" (Matt. vi. 33; Luke xii. 31, New Version). 
This language reveals the fact that the establishment of 
God's kingdom upon the earth (which is necessarily based 
upon righteousness, or it would not be His kingdom) will 
result in such an abundant supply and equal distribution 
that there will be no lack or want ; i.e. all these things will 
be added by virtue of the working of this righteous sys- 
tem as the result of an eternal law of equity. 

Mau}^ a poor dupe has made shipwreck of himself 
trying to make a personal application of this promise. 
One young lady who had spent all her time and money in 
what she falsely supposed was the cause of Christ, trust- 
ing that all these things would be added as she needed, 
when she came to want, and found that these things had 
got to be added (if at all) through the society sewer called 
charity, went and drowned herself, leaving her written 
statement, as her last will and testimony, that God was a 
fraud. If there was any blasphemy attached to the poor 
girl's statement, the responsibility for that blasphemy 
rests upon the Church, and not upon her. If this promise 
was made by Divine Authority and intended to be per- 
sonal, and then violated with such cool, cruel indifference, 
it leaves God with no alternative but the stio;ma of fiaud. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 71 

But the fraud was the work of the Antichrist that has 
changed the sense of the major part of Christ's teachings, 
and made them seem to indorse and conform to the 
world's great false S3'stem (kingdom) of fraudulent govern- 
ment. "For after all these things do the nations seek." 
The idea is that the nations are constructed upon such 
false premises that they are obliged to keep up this con- 
stant care and conscious thought for the morrow. It is 
the bane of every national life, and brings all mankind 
to a premature grave. 

The major key of Christ's trumpet-blasts was pitched 
to the national scale, the minor key to the individual ; for 
the individuals make the nations, but the nations are the 
crowning purpose of the divine intention, and constitute 
the major key or mass chord in the divine harmonic whole. 
God is not perfecting parts with no relative purposes to 
the whole. It is tlierefore of the most vital importance, 
as entailing immeasurable consequences, that we look 
upon the teachings of Christ in this double sense. 

In this light things of the New Testament loom up 
before us with more than triple magnitude, in which there 
is perhaps nothing more important than the parable of the 
building of the two houses, one upon a rock, the other 
upon the sand; for here again is the phrase ''house" 
used in a national sense, signifying a collective body. 
It is, like man}' other phrases, used by Christ as a sort of 
indirect quotation from prophetic language; as ''house 
of Israel," "house of David," "house of Judah," all 
having reference to plural bodies. 

In this parable (considered in its major sense) is written 
the destiny of this great house of Christendom, or which, 
properly speaking, is the house of Antichrist. The par- 



72 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

able is the summing up of the discourse, after having set 
forth his principles for national construction and embodi- 
ment ; and for the prime motor in the rule of life, of 
which the sum is the Golden Rule ; the condition, freedom 
from the anxieties of future necessities ; and the result, 
a pure Christendom, or the kingdom of God. He con- 
cludes with the remarkable declaration, in the words of 
the parable, which holds the prophetic destiny of any 
body, either single or collective, claiming to be the repre- 
sentatives of His doctrines, as follows: "Therefore who- 
soever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them " 
(i.e. sayings contained in this special discourse which He 
had just delivered — no reference whatever to any New 
Testament, for it was not in existence), ''I will liken 
him unto a wise man, that built his house upon a rock : 
and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell not : for 
it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth 
these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened 
unto a foolish mai;i, which built his house upon the sand : 
and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
winds blew, and l)eat upon that house ; and it fell : and 
great was the fall thereof" — this language, describing not 
an individual, but a great false S3^stem spanning the whole 
dispensation, declares what shall be the end of that 
system. 

The term '' great fall " signifies the fall of a great insti- 
tution built upon a mass of incohesive material, likened 
to sand because of its shifting character ; a material you 
can mould into any fashion, but none of the forms will 
stand when tested for practical use ; a perfect symbol of 
all the various denominational sophistries of Christendom, 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 73 

none of which will stand the test when confronted with 
truth. 

That Christendom has heard all these sayings of His, 
she cannot deny ; that she has done any of them, she 
cannot substantiate the claim. She constitutes the many, 
saying, ''Lord, Lord,'' claiming to cast out devils, and 
doing many wonderful works in His name. 

But she has perverted every one of these sayings of 
His from their lofty, purifying, holy purpose of divine 
elevation, xlegrading them to the level of sensual idolatry ; 
and built up a commercial system of iniquity, constituted 
in the practice of every principle of evil mentioned in the 
Decalogue ; a system which oppresses the poor to a condi- 
tion which makes life intolerable, while it exalts the rich 
to heaven ; which robs the masses to exalt the classes ; 
a system that forces hundreds of thousands of women 
into prostitution, and hundreds of thousands of men into 
drunkards' graves ; which creates legions of criminals, 
and then damns them ; a system that brings no (good 
news) gospel to the poor, but "• takes his one only lamb 
(labor) , and dresses it for the rich man's table ; a sys- 
tem that deprives the faithful toilers and producers of 
the bountiful luxuries of earth from evc^r tasting them ; 
a system that counts a poor man less than a beast ; for 
it does recognize a clause in its ritual providing for oxen 
and clergymen (1 Cor. ix. 9), but nothing for the laboring 
man that treadeth out not only the corn, but every product 
under heaven. His mouth is covered with the muzzle of 
fraud, known by the hypocritical term of supply and de- 
mand ; so when he has heaped up mountains of the sur- 
plus of earth's bounties, he starves nnd freezes because 
there is too much abundance. The rich, not being in need 



74 THE SERMOK ON THE MOUNT. 

of SO much surplus to collect usury from too much, makes 
it inconvenient for him to keep the poor from getting 
some. 

The truism that " a stream cannot rise higher than its 
fountain" is especially demonstrated in this case ; for as 
the fountain is substitutional righteousness or righteous- 
ness by proxy, personal and corporate righteousness is 
out of the question, and heaven must be peopled with 
whited scoundrels whose only credentials are in their be- 
lief that one person was righteous ; consequently they are 
reckoned so, although the}^ are not. To sum up : God, 
for a consideration, reckons unrighteousness righteous- 
ness, and admits it into heaven, and founds His kingdom 
upon this principle. This is the highest principle known 
to Christendom, and is an everlasting blockade at the 
entrance to the harbor of righteous attainment, by assimi- 
lation of divine perfection in the Golden Rule or pure love 
which makes a man better than the law. 

Herein is the fruit that proves their tree. By adopting 
this bastard doctrine into their rule of government, they 
have produced just this present state, and are responsible 
for it. For centuries the Church literally ruled the world, 
and even now virtually controls it. So the present order 
is of her own shaping ; her assumption that she is saving 
the world is a delusion : she is saving nothing. Truth 
is salvation ; and whatever measure we have of that, 
we have just that amount of salvation and no more ; and 
when all we have is truth, then is our salvation complete, 
and not till then. 

This old tree of pagan planting, which seeks to break 
down the pillars upon which high heaven rests, and make 
God out a liar by the hocus pocus act of vicarious atone- 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 75 

meiit, by which they would tiiithorize Him to declare im- 
righteoiisness righteousness, and intrude wrong mto the 
kiugdom of heaven under the name of right, through the 
introduction of this sliding scale of proxy righteousness, 
in order to escape the demands of the Golden Eule, has 
borne its fruit of universal corruption from the crown of 
the head to the sole of the foot of tliis present Christless 
Christendom, of w^iich the alread}' dead-ripe fruit is 
ever3^where falliug from the tree and rotting in its own 
corruption, or being gathered in by States prisons and 
foreign refuge escapes, from Sunday-school graduates 
and exemplary Christians. So common has this state of 
things become that one of our daily journals calls for 
something fresh, saying, " Do give us one case of defal- 
cation without this monotonous exemplary Christian 
attachment." 

Christ says of this corrupt tree that it " shall be hewn 
down and cast into the fire " ; and now the axe is laid at 
the roots of it, and blind are they that cannot see the 
already kindled fire waiting to consume it. 

The sham of our society comes through the sham of 
our Christianity. '' Therefore all things whatsoever ye 
would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them : 
for this is the law and the prophets" (Matt. vii. 12). 

This character is the coronation of humanity completing 
the work of the law and the prophets, with which Clirist is 
included as the Great Prophet, and this is the character 
to be wrought out, and put into general use before one 
jot or tittle of the law can be discounted. It is the sum 
and substance and complete accomplishment of the first 
and last intention of the divine purpose in the working 
of the law and the prophets ; a character that the 



76 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

Church of this dispensation bears no relation to whatever. 
It is the distinctive feature of true Christianity to be 
wrought into the warp and woof of all its purposes, prac- 
tices, privacies, publicities, plans, and structures : there is 
no such thiug as Christianity without it. The system 
operated by this motive, and known by this feature, is yet 
future. 

" Enter ye in at the strait gate." Substitution is not a 
strait gate, and requires no especial character ; like an open 
sepulchre, it takes in rot and corruption as the most 
welcome ; the murderer, thief, and freebooter are especial 
favorites, as their absence of personal righteousness is 
more apparent than it is in a moral character. 

" Beware of false prophets that come to you in sheep's 
clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves " (Matt. 
vii. 15). This text is a prophetic photograph of the whole 
system of priestcraft, from the Pope on his throne to the 
Hallelujah Sal of the Salvation Army. One and all with- 
out exception come to us, claiming to represent the Lamb ; 
while the Pope gathers in his millions of what he pretends 
he doesn't care for. The priests gather thousands and 
hundreds of thousands, many of them as rich as Croesus, 
while they preach ''lay not up for yourselves treasures 
upon earth" ; while all of them are eagerly place-seeking, 
courting patronage, scrambling for position, seeking favor- 
itism, invariably finding the call of God in the amount ot 
shekels ; and all representatives of a greedy, grasping, 
hoarding, devouring, wolfish, dispositional organization of 
society; a set of ravening wolves within, though clothed 
in sheepskin. All this bombast and assumed concern for 
souls, issuing from the mouths of a great bread-and-butter 
brigade, is consummate hypocrisy. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 77 

As though this horrid burlesque on the doctrines of 
Christ, transferring them from the pure and sim[)le truth 
of divine righteous principles to a myth of fable, was 
soul-saving ! They have not yet learned the elementary 
principles of saviug souls. An institution that has never 
found interest enough to devise some plan in this bounti- 
ful world for equaliziug those bounties in some measure, 
when for over a thousand years the}' have had all power 
in their own bauds, is not fit to be trusted with eternal 
interests, and knows nothing of them; and all this appar- 
ent fervor and disinterested anxiety comes out of that 
inward condition of a wolfish appetite for the lucrative 
places and positions of honor which this house of mer- 
chandise has built up for themselves, ostensibly to dis- 
tribute milk and wine without money and without price, 
preach the Gospel to the poor, and furnish to whosoever 
will, freely. But the poor find the price so high they can- 
not afford it ; and if they could, there is so much of caste 
in it they don't want it : while the rich like it, because they 
find as much use for their caste there as anywhere, and 
the price it costs enables them to keep up class distinc- 
tions. Her record of blood-guiltiness since her organi- 
zation under Constantine is unsurpassed. Where Nero 
burned a few hundred Christians, she has burned and 
martyred millions. But, coming down to the present 
time, all this unchristian condition of oppression, suffer- 
ing, and turbulence is due to her false teaching and the 
false system she has built up. Such is the character of 
the fruit of this tree, but the extent of it is beyond the 
power of man to compute. 

The kind of justice that would consign the monster 
Nero to eternal burnings for burning a few Christians, 



78 THE SEKMON ON THE MOUNT. 

and would exalt the Christian monstrosity to heaven for 
doing much more of the same thing, is a sample of the 
fruit principles generated from this tree, and is a perfect 
illustration of the operation of the great vicarious dis- 
solving-view act, where Satan is transformed into an 
angel of light, which is the root principle that sires all 
our society wickedness of cruelty, crime, distress, and 
poverty, and makes necessary all our criminal and pau- 
per institutions, and exalts a large class of unproductive 
drones and leeches, whose only business is to sap the 
life out of their fellows, and authorizes and defends a 
business S3'stem impossible to be carried on upon strict 
Christian principles — a system which Christ rejected in 
toto and would have none of it. 

It is not a supposable case to a believer in prophecy 
that such an institution could itself escape the prophetic 
eye and scathing tongue of the fiery prophet — an institu- 
tion that has falsified the rendering of every fundamental 
truth of divine revelation, changing and shading words 
and phraseology, until their original meaning is lost sight 
of, and they seem to conform to the harmony of an oppos- 
ing doctrine, corrupting all principles ; for example, they 
have changed the word love to charity^ and spirit to spook 
or gJiost^ age or dispensation to loorld^ presence to com- 
ing^ and many more, all of which to the masses seem so 
unimportant ; yet every one of these words represents a 
pivot upon which balances the poles of eternal antipodes, 
the bare shading of which carries them over to the oppo- 
site side. 

It takes no especial sagacity to see that all these words 
are shaded upon the side of falsehood, for God is not a 
spook or ghost. Love is not charity, or any part of it. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 79 

Love does a work of itself, while eharity does a work of 
conscience ; nothing more. Presence is not coming : it is 
something present, while coming is something future, or 
yet to come. The end of the age or dispensation is not 
the end of the world, and does not imply anything of the 
kind. Each one of these words here referred to, from 
the only proper sense that any one can make out of them, 
exactly reverse the doctrines to which they have formerly 
been applied. The question arises. Could all these things 
(so uniformly one-sided, all in support of certain dogmas) 
have been unintentional accidents? 

The whole false system is built upon three sand-hills ; 
namel)", superstition, fear, and selfishness. The best ele- 
ments of man's nature would not enter such a house. 
These evil incentives have been the great motive force of 
Christendom ; forces that, instead of fostering, we should 
seek to eliminate from the system. 

God's kingdom must be built upon the very best mate- 
rial in the dominion of man ; namely, righteousness, love, 
and truth, resting upon deducible evidences. 

The principle of saving mankind is not to a location or 
commercial quality, but to a condition of fact. The trend 
of human thought is erroneous. To correct and restore 
that thought to the truth is life. False or erroneous 
thought has the germs of the death-rattle in it, the same 
as poor blood in the body. The life is contained in the 
thought. As blood constitutes the life of the body, so 
thought constitutes the life of the mind. All there is to 
our physical life is contained in the pulsations of the 
blood ; when pulsation stops, life ceases. All there is 
to our mental life is contained in the pulsations of our 
thought ; when those thought-pulsations cease, there is 



80 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

nothing more in the thought realm. Purifying the blood 
saves the body ; purifying the thought saves the soul or 
mind to truth. 

It is said that "in the acorn is contained the whole 
complete oak " ; it needs no additional principle to make 
it a tree, but expansion will do the work. 

So with the Golden Rule or new command, " Love one 
another." This one word love contains all of the com- 
plete principles of the kingdom of God, and only awaits 
expansion in proper soil to fill the whole earth ; the 
stone cut out of the mountain ; a principle from out 
of the divine governmental system, expanding until it 
absorbs all other systems, and makes the divine thought 
triumphant, universal, a unit of all things. 

The mission of Christ was to reverse the world's order 
of working ; to teach them to minister to others instead of 
to self. "The son of man came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister." 

When the world as a whole once " catches on " to that 
science, no power will ever be able to reverse the order 
again. We get a glimpse of the life-giving principle in it 
through the symbol of Christmas giving. This custom 
which has become so universal is not so much pointing 
back to a dead past, to an uncertain date of a personal 
birth of which we have no authentic account; but points 
forward to the world's new birth, when the Herod of fear 
shall be dead, and the human family shall have returned 
out from the Egypt of selfishness, entered the New Jeru- 
salem of governmental righteousness, purified itself in 
the temple of divine love, and learned the divine high 
art of ministering to others : then will love, affection, 
generosity, and a desire to do good be the common birth- 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 81 

mark ; the same as hate, indifference, selfishness, and a 
desire to be served is now. Then will the Christ beam in 
every face ; none will ask " Know ye the Lord?" but all 
will know him, from the least even unto the greatest, 
through this simple rule of love. " Every one that loveth is 
born of God, and knoweth God " (1 John iv. 7). '' Then 
will Christ see the desire of his soul, and be satisfied." 

But this result can never come from the present bogus 
Christianity ; and the sooner the old pagan house careens, 
the better for the world. She has had her season, sown 
her seed, and borne her fruit of wild grapes, and has 
already passed into a state of decay. If her fruit has been 
so bitter in the green state, what must it be in the ripe (or 
judgment), which she is already beginning to harvest? 

In her teaching and practice she has educated the 
world to minister wholly to self ; to work for greed ; live 
like hogs, and die like fools : they have taught us, like the 
hunted ostrich, to thrust our deficient head under the shad- 
owy leaf of substitutional righteousness, with our clumsy 
body of sin all exposed to the huntsman, vainly fooling 
ourselves with the pagan subterfuge that by covering our 
senseless heads with the skull-cap of another's righteous- 
ness, we can thrust our old man of sin into the open gates 
of paradise, and populate heaven with scavenger garbage 
from the slums of earth. 

When the children of Israel received their covenant at 
the hands of Moses in the land of Moab, that covenant 
contained the history of their destiny (Dent, xxviii.), 
written in the conditions of the covenant. That prophecy 
has been fulfilled to them (but sadly), under the condi- 
tions resulting from the violation of the covenant on their 
part instead of the obedience. 



82 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

The Sermon on the Mount was a new testament 
which when once indorsed doctrinally takes the form of a 
prophetic covenant, and in that covenant is written the 
destiny of the institution embracing its doctrines. The 
Church indorsed the platform and constructed its house 
ostensibly upon its principles ; but in realit}' it reversed 
the principles, and instead of having a house reared upon 
the rock-bed of divine principles as revealed by Christ in 
his mountain discourse, they have built it upon the shift- 
ing sand-bed of pagan mythology. The prophetic decree, 
pronounced by no less a person than Christ Himself, is, 
that it shall not stand. 

The great line storm of dispensational gathering has 
set in ; the rain is descending ; the floods are increasing ; 
the winds are blowing with increasing velocity, and beat- 
ing against that house. Will she stand? 

Her children's hell is already washed out and gone ; her 
heathen damnation is half gone, while the other half is 
shaking ; her eternal damnation is twisted out of all 
shape ; her hell has been struck by lightning and knocked 
into sheol ; while her immaculate conception dogma is 
struggling in the toils of a cyclone ; vicarious atonement 
has skipped to Canada, waiting for a settlement of its 
fraud ; while the trinity God stands shaking in his boots 
on a piece of wreck in a boundless ocean ; the probation 
dogma has exploded, and half of it gone over the river 
Jordan, and the other half is too weak to travel. Such is 
the prophecy of the Sermon on the Mount, and the present 
condition of the old house it condemns already, a tattered 
wreck of her former state and fast going to pieces,, and 
is liable at any time to careen over and collapse. Three 
facts stand irrevocable against her : First, the prophecy 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 83 

*tliat if she proved recreant to her trust, she should be 
destroyed. Secondly, she has proved recreant to that 
trust, and become the object of that prophetic indictment. 
Thirdly, all the appliances specified for her dissolution are 
now in active operation, and she is very perceptibly going- 
down in the storm. 

" Enter ye in at the strait gate," is the sum-total text 
of the Sermon on the Mount. This gate opens to no 
substitutes, compromises no offences, issues no licenses, 
grants no indulgences, and receives no spurious tickets. 
Christendom has never entered such a gate, neither has 
she one in her system. 

But she has constructed a wide gate at the entrance to 
her domains, on the basis of substitutional righteousness, 
which closes to all credentials of personal righteousness, 
but opens full into the broad way of destructive elements, 
seductive forces, evil incentives, free license, and univer- 
sal indulgence, with the clearance papers of the final 
proxy of a paid-up policy for all the sin you have been 
pleased to commit in- a life ill spent through the belief of 
this -wholesale indulgence, with no merit ^vhatever but the 
virtue of believing it ; a virtue that can have no possible 
merit beyond that of believing anything in which your 
belief is just as liable to be wrong as right. If there was 
the great virtue in simply believing a thing, that the 
Church claim, that virtue must come as the result of 
the working of a fixed law in which every vice could be 
transformed into a virtue, simply by believing it to be so ; 
and every lie could be made truth by the same process. 

But the facts of life teach us that there is no virtue 
whatever in the belief of anything not substantiated by 
the testimony of deducible evidences. 



84 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



A roadway once entered upon through the gateway of 
false premises necessarily broadens to accommodate the 
natural expansion of its growing principles ; and, as the 
principles are no barrier to extending claims, removing 
landmarks is in the line of its constitutional development 
or accommodation. If the Church had entered that strait 
gate and narrow way, she should be able, in eighteen 
centuries, to show the fruit of some one principle accom- 
plished and in active operation, as a universal benefactor; 
but instead of this, her wide gate and broad road have 
widened and broadened, until she has removed all the 
interfering boundaries between herself and those principles 
that constitute the kingdom of Satan. 



Love your enemies, bless them 
that curse you, do good to them 
that hate you, and pray for them 
which despitefuUy use and per- 
secute you (Matt. v. 44). 

Take no thought for the mor- 
row. 

For after all these things do 
the nations seek. 

But seek ye first the kingdom 
of God, and his righteousness ; 
and all these things shall be 
added unto you (Matt. vi. 25 to 
34 inclusive). 

But I say unto you. That ye 
resist not evil : but whosoever 
shall smite thee on thy right 
cheek, turn to him the other 
also (Matt. v. 39). 



We know of no church or civil 
order that is demonstrating this 
principle. 



We know of no Christian or 
secular order or body of people 
that ai^ in a condition to prac- 
tise this principle ; neither is 
Christendom seeking to estab- 
lish that kingdom of principles 
that would enable its citizens to 
make these precepts practical. 

The history of Christian wars, 
aggressive and defensive, com- 
prises the sum of most of the 
fighting for the last 1800 years of 
any consequence. It comprises 
the world's war record for that 
period principally, and it has 
been largely for conquest. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



85 



All they that take the sword 
shall perish with the sword 
(Matt. xxvi. 52). 

For the kingdom of God is 
not meat and drink; but right- 
eousness, and peace, and joy 
in the Holy Ghost (Rom. xiv. 
17). 

Therefore all things whatso- 
ever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so unto 
them ; for this is the law and 
xhe prophets ; i.e. this is the 
sum total of the purpose of 
Chrict and of God. 

He that is of God heareth 
God's words ; ye therefore hear 
them, not because ye are not of 
God (John viii. 47). 

Ye are of your father the 
devil, and the lusts of your 
father ye will do : he was a 
murderer from the beginning, 
and abode not in the truth, be- 
cause there is no truth in him. 
When he speaketh a lie, he speak- 
eth of his owm : for he is a liar, 
and the father of it (John viii. 
44). 

He that saith he is in the light, 
and hateth his brother, is in dark- 
ness even until now ( 1 John ii. 
9), 



Since Christianity first came 
into x^ower through Constantine, 
it has deluged the world in blood. 

The Christian powers, backed 
by the solid Church, have subju- 
gated every foreign nation not 
strong enougli to resist them, and 
some of them they have reduced 
to absolute poverty. Witness 
England and France against 
Egypt; witness England, France, 
Russia, Prussia, against Turkey ; 
witness England against India, 
Ireland, and other nations that 
feed the voracious belly of the 
British lion; witness England, 
France, Russia, Prussia, grab- 
bing for African soil. Why don't 
they grab China 1 Only because 
of China's numerical strength. 
So they are obliged to content 
themselves with snubbing her. 

The present status of Christen- 
dom in its broad-road march to 
the millennium is : — 

Standing Armies. 





Enlisted 


Annual 




Men. 


Expense. 


Russia . . . 


788,000 


$144,216,000 


France . . 


471,000 


100,000,000 


Germany . . 


420,000 


92,574,000 


Spain . . . 


330,000 


49,147,000 


Austria . . 


296,000 


50,6fe0,000 


Italy . . . 


200,000 


37,984,000 


Great Britain, 


192,000 


83,800,COO 


British India, 


123,862 


100,000,10 J 


United States, 


27,976 


30,340,000 


Total . . 


2,768,838 


$694,629,000 



86 



THE SERMON OK THE MOUNT. 



He that loveth not, knoweth 
not God ; for God is love (1 John 
iv. 8). 

If a man say, I love God, and 
hateth his brother, he is a liar : 
for he that loveth not his brother 
whom he hath seen, how can he 
love God whom he hath not seen 1 
(1 John iv. 20). 

He that doeth good is of God : 
but he that doeth evil hath not 
seen God (3 John 11). 

From whence come wars and 
fightings among you 1 come they 
not hence, even of your lusts 
that war in your members ? Ye 
lust, and have not : ye kill, and 
desire to have, and cannot ob- 
tain : ye fight and war, yet have 
not (James iv. 1, 2). 

Doth a fountain send forth at 
the same place sweet water and 
bitter? (James iii. 11). 

Can the fig tree, my brethren, 
bear olive berries ? either a vine, 
figs ? so can no fountain both 
yield saltwater and fresh (James 
iii. 12). 

Every tree that bringeth not 
forth good fruit is hewn down 
and cast into the fire (Matt. vii. 
19). 



Navies. 



Grr't Britain 
France . 
Russia . 
Spain 
Italy . . 
Un'd States, 
G-ermany 
Austria . . 
Brazil 
Sweden . 

Total . 



Sea- 
men. 



58,800 

47,500 

42,169 

12,048 

10,800 

8,250 

7,365 

8,014 

6,684 

6,141 



207,271 



400 
226 
150 
138 
66 
139 



63 
141 



1451 



Anmial 
Expense. 



$52,935,000 

40,799,000 

20,000,000 

16,536,000 

7,544,000 

15,022,000 

11,165,000 

4,600,000 

9,994,000 

4,353,000 



$169,948,000 



Army and navy, 2,976,109; 
expense, §864,677,000. 

In addition to these forces of 
standing armies there are re- 
served forces, all drilled, ready 
to be called into immediate ser- 
vice, sufficient to swell the num- 
ber to about twelve million men, 
as follows : — 

The reserve forces of 

Russia 2,252,126 

Grermany 1,500,000 

France 1,230,000 

Austria-Hungary .... 1,220,000 

Italy 664,105 

Great Britain and smaller 
Powers 2,500,000 

All these orthodox men are 
trained, and training in the prac- 
tice of producing the greatest 
possible amount of mortality in 
the shortest given space of time, 
and many of them are coolly 
calculating the policy of war as 
a commercial expediency. The 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



87 



For if ye love them whicli 
love you, what reward have ye ? 
(Matt. V. 40). 



If thine enemy hunger, feed 
him ; if he thirst, give him drink 
(Uom. xii. 20). 



A good tree cannot bring forth 
evil fruit, neither can a corrupt 
tree bring forth good fruit (Matt, 
vii. 18). 



By their fruits ye shall know 
them (Matt. vii. 20). 



present war debt of this ortho- 
dox order is as follows : — 

France $6,250,000,000 

Uii88ia 3,600,000,000 

England 3,560,000,000 

Austro-IIungary . . . 2,485,0OJ,00O 

Italy 2,22.5,000,000 

Spain 1,207,000,00) 

PniHsia 1,000,000,0)0 

United States .... 1,137,290,036 

The ancestors of the most of 
the rulers of these countries 
were placed in power by the 
Church. The Papacy placed 
them there by its own infalli- 
ble right in their establishment 
of what they claim is the king- 
dom of God, and these descend- 
ants still claim the divine right 
to rule conferred upon their an- 
cestors by the popes, and they 
still sign their proclamations as 
kings and queens *' by the grace 
of God." 



These nations comprise the so-called Christian nations 
of the earth, and they also comprise the fighting nations 
of the earth. We have not mentioned China, with her 
popnlation of four hundred millions, or Japan, or any so- 
called heathen country not under Christian rule. 

This grand Christian system supports this mighty host 
of bloody butchers upon the shoulders of the poor or 
laboring class. 

The rich increase their wealth by war, through the bene- 
fits of a rising market, and contracting for government 
supplies ; and after the war, by drawing interest on the 
bonded debt, while the working classes slowly pay the 



88 THE SEKMON ON THE MOUNT. 

bills. The science of governing economy consists in so 
regulating tariffs and taxes that the bulk of them falls on 
the latter class. While the government does this in the 
interest of the wealthy class, the wealth}^ class are con- 
stantly seeking to degrade labor to a condition of actual 
subjugation to the will of capital ; to a condition equiva- 
lent to ownership, minus the responsibilitj'. For this 
reason labor has been forced to organize to save itself 
from being di'iven into the worst form of slavery. One 
of these organizations now has a membership of over two 
millions of men that are forced to fight, in this boasted 
Christian civilization, for the right to live, and all branches 
of labor are forced into this warfare. 

There is no such thing as over-production ; underpaid 
labor is what stops the wheels of industrial consumption. 
Then labor has to wait barefooted and hungry while the 
rich consumer clears the market of its glut. Capital buys 
its wa}^ to legislatures and legislates solely in its own 
interests, while labor is rarely ever represented there be- 
cause of its inability to succeed against the purchasing 
power of capital. 

One of the strongest evidences that the Church could 
produce, to prove her claims to having the authorized 
truth, would be to be able to point to a condition of 
unity. This necessity no one, perhaps, is more sensitive 
to than herself, and hence her abortive efforts to unite 
on some kindred basis, so as to be able to claim at least 
some plot of common ground where the law of truth is 
met in its inexorable demands to blend in one thought. 

Truth tends to unity because it has but one standard. 
There is but one truth of a kind, which, when understood, 
is the same to all ; as all that know the product of twice 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



89 



two know it alike, and as fast as we come to understand 
that simple sum we come into one thought upon that 
point, and that is the law of all truth. 

While error leads to separation, diversity, and variety, 
a lie branches out in every direction like a cancer. 

The Church of Christ was to be characterized by its 
unity through the development of the truth. 



Oneness. 

That they all may be one; as 
thou, Father, art in me, and I 
in thee, that they also may be 
one in us (John xvii. 21). 

I in them, and thou in me, 
that they may be made perfect 
in one ; i.e. be brought into one- 
ness of thought. 



Diversity. 

Greek, Roman Catholic, Prot- 
estant, Episcopal, Methodist 
Episcopal, Congregationalist, 
Baptist, Second Advent, Chris- 
tian, Primitive Methodist, Uni- 
versalists, Unitarian, Church 
North, Church South, Reformed 
Catholic, Freewill Baptist, Sev- 
enth-Day Baptists, and scores 
of otl\ers. 



All these different factions are grounded in the same 
fundamental falsehood, and hence they must of necessity 
keep on diversifying, as Error has no soundings and no 
anchor or grappling forces to hold her ; hence her fate 
is to drift on and be at the mercy of every wind of 
doctrine. For evidences she must ever refer back to a 
legendary past, staking eternal interests upon vague tradi- 
tions, none of which she can demonstrate, although she 
claims to be jointly allied to the power that inaugurated 
her in them, and promised her that these things should 
abide with her. 

"And these signs shall follow them that believe. In 
my name shall they cast out devils. They shall speak 
with new ton^nes. 



90 THE SEKMON ON THE MOUNT. 

"They shall take up serpents, and if they drink any 
deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands 
on the sick, and they shall recover " (Mark xvi. 17, 18). 

But these signs do not follow this dispensation. "He 
that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do 
also ; and greater works than these shall he do because I 
go unto my Father" (John xiv. 12). But, instead of 
doing these works to prove their position, they point back 
to a time that is out of the reach of investigation. 

Truth resorts to no such expedients, because it always 
bears in its constitution the presence of conclusive evi- 
dences. 

Truth is not hard to discover when we leave off dab- 
bling in the falsehood of the miraculous and follow the 
natural lines of development. 

To do violence to the laws of mental culture is as disas- 
trous in its results as it is to violate the laws of matter. 
If we should insist that the multiple of problems could 
best be ascertained by a blind faith, regardless of the 
laws of mathematics, we would be in a state of mathe- 
matical chaos, having no rule by which to discover the 
true product, and hence be left to the liability of a thou- 
sand different conclusions ; and this law is the same in its 
results when applied to religion as to mathematics. 

Another test which Christendom must meet, in answer- 
ing to the character of Christ, is the promise of freedom 
from commercial expense of the Gospel, which was to be 
characterized by that contrasting feature from all other 
religions of the world. 

" Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters ; 
and he that hath no money, come ye, buy wine^and milk, 
without money and without price" (Is. Iv. 1). 



THE SEKMON ON THE MOUNT. 91 

" Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life 
gratis" (Rev. xxii. 17). The word gratis is usually trans- 
lated '' freely," but the meaning of the term is '' without 
expense." 

But alas ! the endless and ever-increasing expense of 
the Christian article ! 

The prophetic peculiarity of the Sermon on the Mount 
is in its non-committal construction, making no arbitrary 
assertion that an}' order will take this course or that, but 
contents itself by contrasting conditions and the results of 
two opposite courses, leaving the matter of choice free 
from the binding force of pre-asserted prophetic state- 
ment. So Christianity has no excuse upon the ground 
that she is the subject of infallible and irrevocable proph- 
ecy ; but she has had the freest scope to choose her own 
course. Two skeleton outlines of prophecy were pre- 
sented for choice, to fill up. She has made her choice 
from them and filled up the conditions presented in the 
specifications, and thus become, in a sense, the author of 
her own prophecy and the subject of her own prophetic 
choosing, — which, instead of being the exponent of the 
true principles of Christ, as laid down in the Sermon on 
the Mount and symbolized by the figure of the house built 
upon the rock, she has chosen the opposite course, and 
stands to-day a vivid illustration of symbolic phrases, 
used in the prophetic sermon to denote her fraudulent 
character, in the terms : '' broad wa}^ that leads to destruc- 
tion " ; " false prophets that come to you in sheep's cloth- 
ing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves"; "thorns 
and thistles " ; ''a corrupt tree to be hewn down and cast 
into the fire"; "many saying. Lord, Lord," whom He 
never knew, workers of iniquity. 



92 THE SERMOK ON THE MOUNT. 

The great dispensational house built upon the sand, 
whose fall is great ! 

The culmination of dispensational error as indicated in 
the prophetic character of the Sermon on the Mount ! 

A great false system, grounded in a legendary mon- 
strosity ! 



THE COMING OF CHKIST. 93 



CHAPTER VL 

THE COMING OF CHRIST. 

A SINGLE word oftentimes contains the sensitive pivot 
upon which a whole doctrine turns, and is so essential to 
the form of doctrine it describes that a slight shading- 
caused by the use of a substitutional word will turn the 
scale in the opposite direction, reversing the essential 
principles of the doctrine from their original intention. 

Such is the case with the two words, coming and ivorld, 
as applied to the appearing of Christ ; both words are 
misnomers in the sense in which they are used, and are 
misleading. The correct rendering is pi^esence (instead of 
coming) , and age (instead of world) . 

Hence, instead of using the terms the coming of Christ 
at the end of the world, it should be rendered the pres- 
ence of Christ at the end of the age or dispensation ; and 
even this language is only accommodative ; for Christ 
neither changes to locations, conditions, times, or charac- 
ter, but remains the same yesterda}', to-day, and forever ; 
but the conditions signified in the terms express the devel- 
opment of human conception, the waking up of the dor- 
mant senses in man by the divine energy within him, or 
the progress of spiritual evolution. 

When Christ taught men to say of God, and to God, 
" our Father,'' he introduced the Father to the child. A 
new and strange relation on the child's part, seeming like 



94 THE COMING OF CHRIST. 

a blasphemous assumption, but not so on God's part. 
He knew no other relation ; but for all that, He could 
never be present to that child as its father, until the child 
became conscious of the fact ; for in that consciousness 
dwells the reality of possession, hence the accommodation 
in the terms presence of Christ at the end of the age. 
No more present at that time than ever before, but some- 
body recognizes the fact through the development of cer- 
tain characteristic events that seem to mark most emphat- 
ically those things spoken of as manifesting that pres- 
ence ; and although he has been just as present in all 
development throughout the age, the obtuse race have not 
been able to recognize the fact until events so marked 
and startling occur that they are forced to open their eyes 
and catch a glimpse of the handwriting upon the wall. 
Then follow the troubled thoughts, pallor and shaking, 
and the fear of uncertainty of what these things portend. 
But some of the Daniels are able to read the writing, 
thus: "God hath numbered this (Christless) kingdom 
and finished it"; the rulers in it are "weighed in the 
balances and found wanting." 

The period of time signified in the prophecy as revealing 
the presence (coming) of Christ, is neither premillennial 
nor postmillennial, but constitutes the millennium itself, 
which will stand in correct principles, correct purposes, 
and correct practice. That system which usurps its place 
and prevents its existence to-day, is corrupt principles, cor- 
rupt purposes, and corrupt practice. This mass of cor- 
ruption is grounded in governmental systems, proposed in 
legislative enactments, and practised in an administration 
of governmental favoritism, all done in the name of Christ 
and sanctioned by the Church. Until all this is reversed; 



THE COMIKG OF CHRIST. 95 

the millennium waits. There is an incoming train thau 
has the right of way, the outbound train has delayed so 
long there is a fair prospect of a grand collision ; and as 
neither party proposes to slow up or reverse engines, th(? 
reverse will have to come through the shock of concussive 
force ; but as the incoming train is a long one, reaching 
down into the open country of eternal ages, there is no 
question about the result of the catastrophe, but those in 
the immediate vicinity of the collision may get hurt. 

We say, then, the presence of Christ is dispensational, 
invisible, and plural ; it is not literal, local, individual, or 
final. We cannot go here or there and find a person. 

His appearance must be seen as an intelligence, by an 
intelligence, and will be manifest in the form of divine 
principles, pressing to the front in a persistent demand 
for recognition and instalment in all the systems and 
orders of society and governments. This peculiar mani- 
festation constitutes the appearing of the sign of the Son 
of man. 

The false construction commonh' put upon this subject 
gives false impressions concerning the manner, the time, 
and the purpose of the appearing of Christ : it carries 
the idea that the manner is literal, the time the end of the 
world, and the purpose to destroy the world ; while the 
correct terms show the manner to be invisible, the time 
the end of the dispensation, and the purpose to restore 
the world to the character of its Divine Author. 

This view strikes the key note in the mass chord of 
universal harmony, brings order out of chaos, turns dark- 
ness into light, and "gives beaut}' for ashes." 

The presence of Christ and the kingdom of God are 
synonymous terms in the New Testament, and are used 



96 THE COMING OF CHRIST. 

interchangeably (Luke xvii. 20 to 24 inclusive ; Matt. 
xxiv. 27) : " For as the lightning cometh out of the east, 
and shineth even unto the west ; so shall also the presence 
of the Son of man be." The phraseology used here shows 
that the term lightning in this case signified the day- 
breaking, which is the only light that shines from the 
east to the west. The electric flash is not described by 
that language. It does not necessarily come from the 
east, and it never shines to the west ; but only lights a 
very small circuit, while the breaking day shines from 
the east even unto the west. 

This language describes the manner, and the only man- 
ner, of the appearing of Christ. He comes in the form 
of the bright and the morning star breaking in the new 
day of divine intelligence, and lighting up the world in 
His westward course from Palestine to Palestine again. 

"What shall be the sign of thy presence, and of the 
end of the age?" (Matt. xxiv. 3). The form of this 
question shows that the disciples understood that His 
presence would be invisible, and that it would occur at 
the terminus of a dispensation ; hence they ask what sign 
will indicate the fact. In His reply He gives them a sort 
of historical outline of important events to occur in the 
interval, adding, '' Then shall appear the sign of the Son of 
of man " ; which means nothing more than that the condi- 
tions of the time will create the sign ; i.e, the sign will be 
apparent from concurrent circumstances. 

It follows, then, as Christ will not register at any of the 
hotels, or cannot be found in any secret chamber or 
desert place, in fact cannot be observed by mortal eyes 
anywhere, — for the very good reason that He has no 
m.aterial parts to exhibit, — that his sign must be seen in 



THE COMING OF CHRIST. 97 

the nature of characteristic principles. Therefore, when 
we see any number of minds massing together through 
the force of just such principles as characterized Christ 
when on earth, it is the part of wisdom to see to it that 
we are not found opposing them ; for here is just the point 
where the Church is going to be caught napping, and will 
stumble over the second Christ just as the Jews did over 
tlie first ; otherwise, prophecy, which is just as pertinent 
in her case as in theirs, would fail. 

Resting in the same self-conceited consciousness of 
divine favoritism, and the deep-rooted impression that 
wisdom and knowledge was born and will die with their 
sect, the}^ are doomed to repeat the same blunder of 
rejecting the offer of heaven's highest honors as the 
receiver and dispenser of her bright jewels and rich 
treasures : this much concerning the manner of the com- 
ing of Christ. 

But there is no phase relating to that event made more 
emphatic in prophecy than the time that is to mark it, 
although the very nature of the event precludes one from 
knowing the '"' day and hour," because it is impossible to 
tell just when one first entertains certain thoughts, or 
just when those thoughts become assimilated and massed 
into a plural body sufficiently to establish the fact of the 
abiding presence of a new principle. 

Therefore no direct time-prophecy could point to such 
a day and such an hour upon which to look for an event 
of an entire mental development ; hence the time must be 
approximate time, but which in no case terminates before 
the event prophesied of, but expires in the midst of it : 
thus the time and the events become collateral evidences 
of each other. 



98 THE COMING OF C HEIST. 

When Christ wept over Jerusalem (Luke xix. 41), 
predicting the terrible calamities that should come to 
them "• because tliey knew not the time of their visitation " 
(verse 44, ibicL), which langunge implies that a knowl- 
edge of tlieir prophetic time would have led to a correction 
of their theology, and would have changed their whole 
national history. Every student of prophecy knows very 
well that the Jews' prophetic time relating to that event 
was the seventy weeks of Dan. ix. 24; those weeks 
being understood to be symbolic of seventy weeks of 
years, reckoning a day for a year, making the time 490 
years, which time expires right in the midst of tlie pro- 
phetic events transpiring in the time of Christ. Thus 
the events called for the fulfilment of the time, while the 
expired time called for the events :• both were then un- 
heeded by men who could trace out all signs of weather 
indications, but could discover nothing upon the spiritual 
horizon to indicate either sunshine and serenity, or 
cyclones and chaos. 

For all this indispositi(m to make practical their own 
beliefs, Christendom holds the Jew culpable. 

But while Christendom has a keen eye to the culpa- 
bility of Jewish negligence, and consequent loss of a 
divine privilege, and an opportunity involving eternal 
destinies, her eyes are wilfully closed to the fact that her 
own destinies are strangely coupled on to this same 
prophecy by another time-prophecy, known as the prophecy 
of the twenty-three hundred years of Daniel (viii. 14). 

This time-prophecy was the fatal force that created the 
so-called '" Miller movement," which fulfilled the first half 
of that beautiful parable know^n as the " Parable of* the 
Ten Virgins.'' That movement went forth wath the best 



THE COMING OF CHRIST. 99 

light they then had, to meet the Bridegroom; but, being 
iiiistaken in the manner and purpose of that work, and 
depending too confidently in a Scripture chronology, to 
them the Bridegroom tarried, and tliey slept ; but since 
that time the spirit within, corresponding to oil in the 
vessels, has applied investigation to the letter of Bihl^ 
chronology, and found it wanting. And here comes in the 
beauty and accuracy of symbolic or figurative language. 

Tlie cliaracter of the event corresponding to the symbol, 
if it be in the nature of a time-prophecy, will corrobo- 
rate the time, and the time will corroborate the event ; 
and such was the character of the grand sabbatic or jubi- 
lee cycle. By its system of multiples it pointed forward 
to an event of its own type upon a grand scale, which 
would take place at the terminus of one of these major 
cycles or multiples. 

But as the letter of Bible chronology has failed to locate 
correct time in conjunction with the events to occur at 
the time appointed, the sabbatic cycle, with the aid of 
astronomy and other agencies, have come to the rescue, 
and located the grand multiple of the sabbatic cycle right 
in the midst of the very events of which they prophesy. 

We shall not enter into the details of chronological 
data at any length, but simply refer the reader to a 
concise and comprehensive chronological work entitled 
" Chronology and Prophecy made Plain," by AVilliam 
Sheldon, Brodhead, Wis., whose chronology is far better 
than his theology ; for, like all other so-called Adveutists, 
who are looking for certain signs and wonders to occur 
of a supernatural character, in conjunction with these 
prophetic times, and because these preconcerted dogmas 
are not honoied by the cashier of heaven (which, thank 



100 THE COMING OF CHRIST. 

God, they never will be), they lose confidence in the 
paper, get confounded by the complications of these con 
flicti:ig fables by which the}^ are fettered and bounds 
blinded and deafened, so that they are unable to see or 
hear the footsteps of the Great Jehovah as He passes 
along the highway of prophetic time, making the roac^ 
beautiful with the footprints of fulfilled prophecy, mark 
ing time by the glad tidmgs of passing events, confirming 
the hopes of great joy promised to the world through 
these messengers. Until he throws his theolog}' over- 
board, however correct his chronology may be, he will 
fail to see the events that corroborate the chronology 
which itself, being founded upon astronomical calcula- 
tions, makes it infallible, and sanctions it with divine 
authority, rather than that of any other book, even though 
that book is called the Bible. 

Tlie terminus of the sabbatic cycle which Sheldon's 
chronology locates in 1883 is corroborated by the corre- 
sponding events and characteristic principles implied in 
the Jewish sabbatic or fifty-year jubilee cycle ; to wit, 
restitution of forfeited rights, deliverance from the bond- 
age of unjust laws, restoration of the land to the original 
heirs, and the reconstruction of the government upon just 
and equitable principles. It does not follow that the 
same set forms are to be re-established ; but the principles 
which they symbolize, with all the accumulated wisdom 
of the intervening ages, will be set in motion to formulate 
the great antitypical sabbatic government. The manifest 
indignation of an offended Deit}' will be seen in the form 
of righteous demands for rectification of human rights. 
These demands will not come through the hypocritical 
Church, but through the oppressed and suffering victims 



THE COMING OF CHllTST. 101 

of a wolfish t^'rant called Christian society, who cannot 
recognize the voice of God in these lower classes, bat 
think He must speak through a starched collar and an 
embalmed theology. 

But now the prophetic data of these time-prophecies 
have expired, which call for the execution of the events 
they foretold. But the call is not a vain one ; for, be- 
hold ! they come trooping in ou time, with no delays to 
throw one into doubt as to whether they are that which 
was intended, and with a precision of character answering 
to that which was spoken of them sufficient to satisfy the 
most exacting ; and they fully embody all the points and 
principles implied in the prophetic symbols. They come 
accompanied by an indignation born of the discovery 
among the masses of a legalized system of robbery by 
a class. 

And now there comes a demand thrusting itself into 
the face of a bogus Christian government, calling for a 
halt in governmental freebooting, and a restoration of all 
origiual rights to the heirs of inheritance ; i,e, the people. 
This original inheritance goes behind all human law, and 
rests in the eternal law of divine equity. 

It demands the restitution of the land to the original 
heirs (the people). 

It demands the liberation of every labor slave now in 
bondage to capitalists, as tyrannically controlled, and less 
valued, than if he were a commercial chattel. 

It demands a re-establishment of governments upon 
just and equitable principles. These demands have come 
to stay, and " will fight it out on this line," if it takes 
the whole dispensation. 



102 THE COMII^G OF CHRIST. 

The spirit of deterixiinatioii accompanying these de- 
mands startles the whole world. Men suffer for them, 
sacrifice for them ; and many have already thrown their 
lives into the martyr's pool, with a strength of expectancy 
of winning the game, that is simply marvellous. 

Thus much for the fulfilment of the time, and its 
corroborating events, that ushers in the great jubilee 
year ; not a 3'ear of years, but a j^ear of centuries. 

Thus we see that the manner of His appearing is in 
the dissemination of a work of a mental character ; hence 
invisible to mortal eyes, but plain to the understanding 
of the spiritual conception. We see also that the time 
is dispensational, and is corroborated by contemporary 
events, certified by prophecy. But as the appearing takes 
place at the end of the age, and as there are other ages 
to follow, the purpose is not to destroy the world, but to 
destroy the work of a dispensation, or the old dispensa- 
tional carcass, where the vultures brood (Matt. xxiv. 28 ; 
Luke xvii. 37). In Matthew it reads thus, ''For as the 
lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto 
the west ; so shall also the Son of man be in his day, for 
wheresoever the carcass is, thither will the vultures be 
gathered together" (New Version). There is a strained 
effort among translators to make this text read eagles 
instead of vultures, and one translation (Wilson's ''Dia- 
glot") has it, "wheresoever the dead carcass is, there 
will the eagles be gathered together" ; but it is not eagles 
that gather to a dead carcass, but vultures. We gather 
from the context that the presence of Christ will extend 
from east to west ; ^.e. from Palestine to Palestine. As 
one translator has it, '' as the lightning comes forth from 



Tlir. COMING OF CHRIST. 103 

the siinrisings nnd sliiues to the descents." It will be as 
extensive as the carcass that draws the vultures, '' for 
wheresoever the carcass (extends) is." And that body 
has now extended from the east even unto the west ; has 
circumferenced the globe ; and wherever this carcass is, 
we find gathered to it not only vultures that are there 
for the sake of the social and commercial facilities opened 
up to their voracious greed, but ''every unclean and hate- 
ful bird'' (Rev. xviii. 2) ; some of the most common of 
which are the aristocrat, the monopolist, the oppressor of 
the poor, beside an inuumerable mass of greedy, grasp- 
ing, place-seeking, smaller birds, exchanging favors where 
they will bring the largest returns in commercial results. 
The purpose in the so-called appearing of Christ is to in- 
cubate a new dispensation, bred from germs of truth not 
crossed with pagan traditions. 

But Creedbound says He is coming in the clouds of 
heaven to burn the world ; coming with the voice of the 
archangel and the trump of God. But if Creedbound 
will investigate a little beyond his creed, he will learn 
that these phrases are all quotations from Old Testament 
figures of speech; as, "the Lord rideth upon a swift 
cloud and shall come into Egypt " ; " your goodness is as 
a morning cloud"; "a day of clouds and thick dark- 
ness"; "he poured out his fury like fire"; "he hath 
kiudled a great fire in Zion " ; "I have set a fire in 
Egypt " ; '' blow the trumpet among the nations " ; " blow 
ye the trumpet in Zion"; "a day of the trumpet and 
alarm": "God shall blow the trumpet"; "he uttered 
his voice, the earth melted"; "lift up thy voice, O 
daughter of Gallim" ; "the Lord's voice crieth unto the 



104 THE COMING OF CHRIST. 

city." All these expressions in the Old Testament, and 
hundreds more similar, are figures of speech, having 
reference to events, conditions, and characteristics, and 
they have no different meaning when used in the New 
Testament. Even Peter's vivid description of the pres- 
ence of Christ, where he says, ''the heavens being on 
fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with 
fervent heat/' means nothing more than the process of 
the dissolution of the great false ecclesiastical, political, 
social, and industrial system ; for he says right in the 
same text, '' We should look for and earnestly desire it" ; 
and also, that '' We look for a new heaven and new 
earth"; ^.e. a new ecclesiastical and a new secular sys- 
tem, wherein dwelleth righteousness. It means simply 
burning out the elements of the old, b}^ the process of 
mental combustion, from the friction engendered by the 
introduction of moral principles or disinfectants, leaving 
things in a condition to rebuild ; while if the language 
had a literal meaning, there would be nothing left to make 
the new out of. '' But," says Creedbound, '' it says, ^ He 
shall so come in like manner as they saw him go.' " If 
Creedbound would consider a little, he would see that 
according to Christ's own statement that He cometh not 
by observation, cannot be seen by mortal eyes or handled, 
cannot be found either here or there ; and hence the other 
statement is false, and belongs with the apocryphal gos- 
pels : it belongs with the tares, and not with the wheat ; 
it belongs among the lying wonders of the Antichrist. 
Every condition represented b}' Peter as characterizing 
the day of the Lord (in which the heavens should pass 
away with a great noise) , the dissolving elements (disso- 
lution of church constituents) , the burning earth (fire of 



THE COMING OF CHKIST. 105 

state friction) , and destruction of the works therein (an- 
nihihxtion of legalized injustice), is now in full operation. 
The fundamental doctrines of the great forged Christianity 
are rapidly and irreparably disintegrating, and soon the 
whole mass will go out in smoke. Immaculate concep- 
tion, vicarious atonement, trinity, God, eternal torment, 
fractional salvation of the race, and scores of other 
priestly warblings, are now under trial by competent 
courts, where no appeals can save them from the judg- 
ments of intellectual liberty. 

No kingdom was ever more divided and subdivided 
against itself than the so-called Christian kingdom, mor- 
ally, spiritually, politically, industrially, socially, intel- 
lectually, nominally, and essentially. If there is any 
force in the words of Christ that " a kingdom divided 
against itself cannot stand," how about her standing? 

The world is therefore now on fire to all intents and 
purposes of the meaning intended by the prophets and by 
Christ and the apostles ; and as the first part of the para- 
ble of the Ten Virgins was fulfilled in the going out of the 
great Miller advent movement, so also has the last part 
been fulfilled by the going into a correct understanding of 
the coming of the Bridegroom — a condition into which 
many have entered, and are now resting in the presence of 
the Bridegroom. ''But," says Creedbound, " the parable 
says the door was shut." Very true ; but the door was not an 
arbitrary time-shutter, but a descriptive condition of those 
that do not go in, but stand knocking at the shut door (of 
falsehood) , the same as the reason the first movement did 
not meet the Bridegroom, because they did not meet the 
truth. To meet the truth is to meet Christ. To enter into 
conditions of truth understandingly is to enter into divine 



106 THE COMING OF CHRIST. 

relations. ■ It is a union of the finite with the infinite : that 
is the marriage relation, one and inseparable. Truth to 
truth is a unit. Now any place that one can get into is to 
them an open door, and any place that one cannot get 
into, to them the door is closed. 

To those that the door was said to be shut against, we 
observe He said to them, "I know you not " — a statement 
Christ could not make to the truth, because he knows the 
truth, but will not admit an untruth ; hence the shut door 
to them was false premises, while the open door to those 
that entered is simple truth. 

Why do not the so-called Adventists go in? Simply 
because the oil in their lamps (Bibles ; the letter, a lit- 
eral interpretation of the coming) has burned out, leav- 
ing them in the dark ; i.e, in an untruth, but demanding 
admittance, which they can never have on that line. Like 
the old Jew, they have passed their Messianic data, and 
are feeling in the dark for that door. 

It is said of those that went in, that they had oil in their 
vessels with their lamps ; so that when the letter was 
exhausted, they had recourse to something further ; i.e, 
while the letter contained symbolic truth, it ended with 
that, and the real truth was to come from the oil supplied 
from the mental cai)acity, and consequently by a mental 
application far beyond where the letter could carr}' it, giv- 
ing it a spiritual or invisible character. " Neither shall 
they say, Lo here, or Lo there." If they do say so, " go 
not after them, nor follow them" (for by none of the 
physical senses can He be discovered). 

From the manner we have treated this subject of the 
coming of Christ, one would naturally infer that we admit 
Christ to be God ; but such is not the case. All truth is 



THE COMING OF CHRIST. 107 

divine, find is the centre towards which all thongiit gravi- 
tates, like the stone hurled into space by violent force 
ever so high, only to return to its starting-point. So a lie 
may do violence to the truth, sending it far out beyond its 
base ; but the lie must lose its force, and the truth find its 
gravitation. All truth, as a principle, is eternal, and 
must finally prevail. Any truth once having penetrated 
the realm of humanity, must recur again and again until 
it becomes established. 

Christ gave the best exposition of the i;eturn of truth 
expressed in the coming of a person when he said of John 
the Baptist (Matt. xi. 14) ''And if ye are willing to re- 
ceive it, this is Elijah which is to come." And again 
(Matt. xvii. 12, 13) he says, "Elijah is come already, and 
they knew him not, but did unto him whatsoever they 
listed. The disciples understood that he spake unto 
them of John the Baptist.'' As Elijah came in John 
the Baptist, sim[)ly as a representative of his character 
and principles, so also will Christ come, in representative 
principles and characteristic distinctions manifest in 
massed bodies bold and free, who will set forth the glaring 
hypocrisies, moral wrongs, unequal favoritism, and god- 
less principles of Church and State in the light of divine 
justice, by such conclusive evidences and incontrovertible 
reasoning facts as to provoke the wrath of the great phari- 
saical self-styled peace system, whose peace rests upon 
twelve million stand of arms load.^d to the muzzle, with a 
Christian behind each one, with sins all pardoned through 
the blood of Christ, ready for paradise. This is that 
blessed servant waiting for his Lord, who expects when he 
comes he will find him so doing (Matt. xxiv. 46). Hark ! 
methinks I hear an echo reverberating down the ages, a 



108 THE COMING OF CHRIST. 

voice coming out of the old Jewish Temple, " Woe unto 
you, hypocrites ! hypocrites ! hypocrites ! " It is the voice 
of the coming Christ ; and again I hear His voice, yet 
clearer, and these words ring out in " clarion tones" as 
though just spoken from heaven, '' Ye are of your father 
the devil, aud the lusts of your father ye will do : he was 
a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, 
because there is no truth in him " (John viii. 44). 

In this sense many a noble martyr has come to us with 
their grand old truths, whose own generation was too 
mean to receive them. Galileo was persecuted for discov- 
ering that the world moves ; but to-day every astronomer 
is a Galileo, and the great man is with us while the chil- 
dren of his persecutors (Papal Church) hang their heads 
for shame. So, also, the great and good Socrates and 
Plato are with us in their great and wise sayings. Are 
not their words in the mouth and their thoughts in the 
heart of every scholar throughout the length and breadth 
of the land to-day ? There is no occasion for materializa- 
tion when we get the communion of their thoughts with- 
out it. 

We have lived contemporary with Abraham Lincoln, 
with Professor Agassiz, with John A. Andrew, and 
have never seen one of their persons, or corresponded 
with them ; and yet we have had the communion of 
their thought to the full extent that we have had 
that of General Grant, Charles Sumner, and Horace 
Greeley, all of whom we have seen and known. We 
are having the communion of thought of many living 
persons to-day, whom we probably shall never see, and* 
many others whom we see daily. The only difference 
is, we are able to locate the thoughts upon those we 



THE COMING OF CHRIST. 109 

do see ; but the thoughts are uo more real than those we 
get f roui those we do not see. Therefore, there is no occa- 
sion for a personal a[)pearing or materialization : our real- 
ity is in the realm of mind, and not of matter. 

There can be but one true mind in the universe. All 
minds must think with the Deity, or be opposed to the 
truth. Galileo was the first man who thought with the 
Deity on the question of the world's moving : now we all 
think with him on that point ; but the mind of the Deity 
always stood expressed in the fact that the world did 
move. 

If I allow another mind to control my thoughts, then I 
become absorbed in that mind, whether that mind is right 
or wrong. Consequently we should study the mind of 
Deity as far as possible by all the appliances He has put 
in our power, which I believe are ample to discover the 
truth and fall into line with it, — all on the line of reason, 
rationalism, and evidences as expressed in universal laws. 



110 CHBOKOLOGY OF THE DAYS OF DANIEL. 



CHAPTER VII. 

CHRONOLOGY OF THE T^YENTY-THREE HUNDRED 
DAYS OF DANIEL. 

The prophet says "seventy weeks [490 years] are 
determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city" 
(Dan. ix. 24) ; i.e. determined their national existence, 
which, according to Sheldon's chronology, was just 490 
years from the time Nehemiah began to fortify Jerusalem, 
418 years B.C., to the end of the Jewish nationality. This 
prophecy of 490 years is understood by the best stndents 
of prophecy to be detached from the prophecy of the 2300 
years of Dan. viii. 14. Consequently they had their 
origin at the same time, beginning with the mission of 
Nehemiah to rebuild Jerusalem 418 b.c. 

The 490-year prophecy located the time right in the 
midst of the events it prophesied ; and the Jew was held 
responsible for the knowledge of the time of his visitation 
(Matt. xix. 44). 

The prophec}^ of the 2300 years, which begins at the 
same tune of the seventy weeks, and includes the period 
from the time Paganism cast down the truth to the time 
when the truth would begin to be restored, ends^ according 
to Sheldon's chronology, 1883, and in conjunction with 
the events it prophesies ; i.e, the beginning of the restora-^ 
tion of the truth which was cast down by pagan Rome, 
or cleansing the sanctuary. 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE DAYS OF DANIEL. Ill 

The authority for counting a day for a year is found in 
Ezek. iv. 6. 

The tidal wave that swept over the virgin heart of the 
pure and honest-hearted Father Miller aud his virgiu- 
hearted followers, was caused by the misleading of two 
scripture fallacies, one in the Old and the other in the 
New Testament. The first was by the incorrect reckon- 
ing of Bible chronology unsupported by astronomical 
calculations ; and the other was by the false rendering of 
texts in the New Testament, leading the mind to false 
conclusions in resfard to the mnnner of Christ's cominof. 
Many of these sincere adherents to what they conceived 
to be truth, died broken-hearted ; they had sacrificed a 
world and received nothing in return : no event occurred 
to gladden their vulgar sense of anticipated fireworks, and 
they died, totally unconscious that they themselves had 
ushered in the day of the Lord in fulfilling the first half of 
the parable of the Ten Virgins. True to the letter of the 
parable, their Lord did not come (to their understanding). 
But now He has come (to the understanding of some) ; 
but to others the truth has slammed the door of their old 
theology in their faces ; and as that is all the door they 
know, it will remain a closed door to them until they 
abandon it. 

By the application of astronomy to chronology, it carries 
the time forward just forty years, and locates it where it 
belongs ; here, then, the events ascribed to this date are 
called for, which, happily, are forthcoming in the form of 
a correct understanding of the true character of the Bride- 
groom's presence and consequent recognition, and the 
actual appearance of those identical events, exactly as 
indicated in the prophecies that call for them. Here, 



112 CHRONOLOGY OF THE DAYS OF DANIEL. 

then, we are located right in the midst of the very peculiar 
work prophesied ; to wit, the cleansing of the sanctuary, 
which simply means that the truth which was cast down 
by Paganism (Dan. viii. 12, i.e. the teachings of Christ, 
who is the way, the truth, and the life), which Paganism 
has degraded from a pure, spiritual, simple, and rational 
character to a vulgar literalism and mystical idolatry, 
will be, by the aid of heretics, skeptics, and doubters, 
investigated, separated, and reinstated in its original 
character : all that is true and good will be retained, and 
the pagan trash will be sent to oblivion. It is the same 
class of work represented in the parables of the Wheat 
and Tares which were to be separated at the close of the 
dispensation. 

This peculiar class of work is now in process, and will 
continue until Christianity and Paganism are divorced. 
Its operation can be seen in the form of attacks upon 
ever}' fundamental doctrine held up by Christendom. 
They are attacked by individuals, by factions, and b}' the 
masses. In 1878 the Congregational Church was a unit. 
To-day it is divided in halves on the subject of future 
probation. Many clergymen are leaving Orthodoxy alto- 
gether, and many more are only allowed to remain by 
sufferance, simply because their congregations are so 
imbued with the same heresies the hierarchy are afraid of 
losing them ; and so unpopular have many of these ques- 
tionable dogmas become that b}' a silent concession they 
are vigorously let alone ; while the entire priestcraft are 
holding back information, in the interest of bread and 
butter, that w^ould upset this whole fraudulent system. 

Whenever they are hard pressed by argument, so that 
it stands between impeaching either their honesty or their 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE DAYS OF DANIEL. 113 

intelligence, they crawl into tiie hole of expediency, and 
admit that they see much more than they consider it 
expedient to divulge ; but, r^s they never state the reasons 
for the expediency, we conclude they are bread and but- 
ter ; and if there was any way to remove that bread-and- 
butter incentive, the world would witness "• the greatest 
show on earth,'' in the form of ecclesiastical somersault 
and theological high kicking. For this reason, reforma- 
tion will have to come, just as it always has, through 
the laity. This is the reason great reforms are so slow, 
because the masses naturally look to priestcraft for ad- 
vanced light, while the cleigy just as naturally stick to 
their bread and butter, where all their incentives are 
stored. The world's experience with them should have 
taught it before this not to expect anything from them, 
except here and there an exceptional case where the noble 
part predominates so that the man rises with Christ into 
resurrection or divine life, where all motive is centred in 
righteousness, and never in policy. 

Such has become the changed condition in the advance 
of popular thought in the last ten years towards the break- 
ing up of the whole ecclesiastical system of paganized 
Christendom, that we are fully justified in recognizing the 
cleansing work of God's sanctuary (tlie world) as being 
in active operation. Here then, again, is the prophecy 
and the prophetic event corroborating each other. He 
that would ask better evidence than this would not believe 
though one arose from the dead. 

We have seen now that two time-prophecies, the sab- 
batic cycle and the 2300 years of Daniel, have both 
expired in conjunction with the appearance of those 
events foretold ; and we are now in the shaking time 



114 CHBONOLOGY OF THE DAYS OF DANIEL. 

Spoken of by Paul (Heb. xii. 26, 27), when he says those 
things that are shaken will be removed, because they 
consist in things that are made, i.e. things formulated by 
man ; while the things that cannot be shaken consist in 
eternal principles of truth that emanate from God. 

Heretofore it has been the reproach of time-arguments 
that no events corroborated the time. Then it was that 
great stress was laid on the time, as being correct ; but 
as that which was expected did not occur, the force of the 
argument oozed out. But now the tables are turned, the 
events of dispensational dissolution that are too palpable 
to be mistaken, that are now corroborating the time- 
prophecies, are in themselves sufficient, without particular- 
izing with any great stress upon the prophecies. When a 
certain ruler proclaims to us that on a certain date he will 
send an army to take possession of the place, the date is 
important until the time expires ; but when the time is up, 
the arrival of the event takes precedence, and the date 
is of no special account. Hence we place special impor- 
tance in the corroborating events. 



NEBUCHADNEZZAR S DREAM. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Nebuchadnezzar's dream. 

Whatever this dream was intended to typify must be 
indicated by the joint symbol of both the dream and its 
interpretation, as it is evidently impossible for the in- 
terpretation to be literally fulfilled. The interpretation 
shows the image to represent four successive kingdoms, 
each arising from the ashes of its predecessor, and hence 
each predecessor becomes extinct at the bnth of the new 
kingdom, and cannot be acted upon afterwards ; so that 
when Rome comes in as representing the feet of the 
image, as the fourth kingdom, the other three kingdoms 
have passed out of existence, and could not be affected by 
the stone cut out of the mountain and hurled at the feet. 

The governments of these four kingdoms embody the 
governing principles of the world, and the image in the 
dream presents in its constituents the complete monetnry 
system ; names their various metals, and arranges them 
in the order of their relative value. Thus the head of 
gold, the breast and arms of silver, the belly and thighs 
of copper, the legs of iron, and the feet of clay and iron. 

Here is the symbol of the world's great monetary sys- 
tem complete, each metal given in its relative order ; 
the iron legs representing the united strength of the two 
great divisions of society, rich and poor, who support the 
image. The iron in the feet represents the same element 



116 Nebuchadnezzar's dream. 

of strength ; but the claj mixture, representing the earth 
part, or the relation of real estate to the system occupying 
the base, and intended to give permanent security to the 
image, proves to be the only element of weakness in it : 
from the head down to this point there is not even a sus- 
[)icion of contention. But the introduction of this element 
lets into the system an issue of strife. This vulnerable 
p-irt is struck by a moral force of contending principles 
tliat will provoke a conflict of extermination of the system. 

''Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without 
Iiands [i.e. a divine principle], which smote the image 
u[)on his feet p.e. forced a question of moral rights into 
this weak element], and brake them in pieces. 

'•Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and 
the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the 
chaff of the summer threshing-floors ; and the wind carried 
them away, that no place was found for them : 

''And the stone [moral force] that smote the image 
became a great mountain [governing principle], and 
filled the whole earth" (Dan. ii. 34, 35) ; i.e. became the 
governing principles of the world. 

These four uniyersaJ kingdoms have successively fol- 
lowed each other in the exact order as described ; to wit, 
Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. The latter king- 
dom continued its reign under the claim of universal author- 
ity until the year 1870, which ended the secular power of him 
who claims the right to rule the world. The force that sat 
on this would-be universal monarch was the stone cut out of 
the mountain without hands, or the action of correct thought 
bringing about the just results of right principles. The 
breaking up of the last relic of that kingdom shows the 
presence of the fifth, as it was to be the action of the fifth 



Nebuchadnezzar's dream. 117 

which was to wind up the fourth, and strike a fatal blow 
at the base of the great commercial governmental 
structure created by these four great monopolists of the 
earth grounded in anti-divine principles, and proved in- 
competent to administer a just and equitable administra- 
tion ; hence the issue of the land question. The contention 
of principles of right and wrong, questions of perilous 
import entering in right at the base of this image through 
this element of weakness, just as defined in the interpre- 
tation of the dream, looks ominous, to say the least. 

The Jew would not admit the moral weight and divine 
authority of the teachings of Christ, because He belonged 
to the lower class of society. The Gentiles will not admit 
the moral weight and divine authority of the same argu- 
ments grounded in the same principles, and the pertinence 
of the same demands to-day, because they come through 
and in the interests of the lower classes to them. God 
cannot be seen coming through any agent but the Church ; 
hence the opposition to the demands that Justice and 
Charit\' swap seats, that Justice come to the front, and 
Charity take a back seat ; because when Justice has done 
her work, there will be no call for Charity. But these 
skirmishing principles representing the advance guard of 
the grand army of divine progress, are the old veterans 
belonging to the corp of the Ancient of Days, and were 
on duty before Abraham was, under command of the 
great I Am, and have fought in every battle for right since 
the world began. Beside the army of regulars there are 
resources for re-enforcements spread over the vast do- 
mains of the unlimited universe. Is there any question 
as to the final result of this conflict ? 



118 BUILDING THE TEMPLE. 



CHAPTER IX. 

BUILDING THE TEIVIPLE. 

" But God said unto me, Thou shalt not build a house 
for my name, because thou hast been a man of war and 
hast shed blood" (1 Chron. xxviii. 3). This text, like 
other symbolic language, was not spoken for David's 
sake, but to show through the similitude of its figure 
that no institution, either civil or religious, whose hands 
have been stained with the blood of its fellow-men, can 
ever become the divinely authorized instrument for build- 
ing up that system of principles which shall constitute the 
true spiritual temple or government of God, variously 
called "Kingdom of Heaven," ''Kingdom of God," 
''Kingdom of Christ," "Kingdom of the Son," and 
other titles. 

It is said that when David and Saul returned from the 
slaughter of the Philistines, the maids of Israel that went 
out to meet them sang, " Saul has slain his thousands, 
and David his tens of thousands." 

Butchering Philistines under the pretence of divine 
authority seemed to be the highest ambition known to 
David and Saul at that time ; hence Saul gives David his 
daughter Michal for the scalps of a hundred Philistines ; 
and David, in his zeal, brings two hundred. And when- 
ever these human sportsmen felt like sporting, they would 
go forth with the assumption of heavenly sanction (as 



BUILDING THE TEMPLE. 119 

light-hearted and free as a hundred Christian English- 
men and fifty dogs will now to kill one poor little fox), 
sliinghtering men with a fiendish energy born only of the 
zeal of religious fanaticism, which extended to butchering 
women and little children, with the relish of bloodthirsty 
demons ; and to escape the odium of an indignant human- 
ity and the execration of future historians they blasphemed 
the name of the God of love (who says, "love your 
enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that 
curse you," who '' sends rain and sunshine upon the just 
and unjust" alike, and who is "the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever"), by charging Him with the respon- 
sibility of the crime. 

But when David's ambition took a higher turn, and he 
thought to build a house for God, although it was only 
a literal temple, a symbol of the higher one to be built 
in men's intellects and thoughts, his services were not 
wanted, and between his guilty conscience and common- 
sense he saw that lie was not a fit subject to symbolize 
the builder of a great peace system, with love for its 
motor, and so he very sensibly declined the honor. 

Looking now from the high standard of this symbolic 
elevation, we see the present claimant to royal honors 
assuming to be the authorized agent to build the spirit- 
ual temple, or the real house of God ; but what are her 
credentials? how does she square by the "root and 
branch of David" ? how by the "bright and the morn- 
ing star" ? 

This usurper, known as the Churcii, may truly be said 
to have had its birth in the sword of Constantine, which 
cut off the head of apostolic succession and grafted on its 
own ; so now we have nothing farther back than the Con- 



120 BUILDING THE TEMPLE. 

stantine succession. Being born of the sword, it was a 
thing of the sword. That sword drawn by Constantine 
has never yet been sheathed by Christendom ; her kings 
are arrayed in war paint to-day, ready for a clash the 
moment a weak place is discovered in any brother nations 
defences : it matters little whose they are. 

In her early history her converts were largely made by 
force of arms ; her historical record up to the time of the 
crusades is written in blood and barbaric savagery. 
During the crusades, from the eleventh to the thirteenth 
century, she nearly depopulated Europe in her attempt to 
depopulate Asia. All this demonism under the sanction 
and authority of infallible popes, who claimed to be 
authorized by God to slaughter His images by the whole- 
sale. Noble men, women, and little children were 
all ruthlessly slaughtered b}' this monstrous impostor, 
the Church, under the blasphemous libel of divine 
sanction ; but, like David of old, it found the divine 
tenacity to life in its enemies so much stronger than in 
itself, that it would itself be annihilated long before 
it could annihilate the enemy ; so they discovered that 
God had made a mistake in calling them to this work. 
Of course it was God's mistake ; it could not be an infalli- 
ble pope's : besides, when did a Church council ever vote 
God infallible ? So when God found out His mistake He 
authorized the infallible popes to call home their bloody 
hordes and employ them to exterminate heretics. And 
from the thirteenth century to the eighteenth the Church 
was the author and executor of the most unprincipled, 
cruel, fiendish, unmerited, needless tortures, butcheries, 
burnings, slaughters, treacheries, robbing, lying, slander- 
ing, libelling and traducing both God and man, and com- 



BUILDING THE TEMPLE. 121 

mitting by wholesale every sin mentioned in the Decalogue, 
the extent being beyond our comprehension ; and if they 
have not sinned ngainst the Holy Ghost, then no one need 
fear of ever committing that sin, for they have exhausted 
the ingenuity of man for '' finding any new forms of sin.'* 
Any one that is ignorant of these facts is ignorant of 
the very history he ought to know ; for not a statement 
is here made that is not founded upon authenticated his- 
torical facts. 

If David slew his tens of thousands or hundreds of 
thousands, and was thereby cut off from building God's 
house, what shall be said of this dispensational impostor, 
who has slain its hundreds of millions? And yet this 
''Ruddygore" fraud claims an apostolic succession, as 
though God had caught Himself in such a snare that He 
is under obligation to a succession of any kind. He can 
raise up children to the apostles of these stones of the 
nineteenth century as easily as He could raise up children 
to Abraham from the stones of the first century. But we 
are not pleading the cause of any particular brnnch of 
Christendom. Protestantism is as '' deep in the mud" as 
Papalism is ''in the mire," and is only part of the same 
system. Although her history is not written, like the 
Catholic, with the title of the dark ages, her record is a 
bloody one, and the two stand side by side to-day as the 
most aggressive fighters and the authors of the most pow- 
erful life-exterminators in the known world. 

Allowing that the orthodox religion is true, Christendom 
has sent more people to hell by the sword and bullet than 
she has ever converted, antl hell must be largely populated 
by those that can say, '' I was sent here by an orthodox 
bullet." 



122 BUILDING THE TEMPLE. 

The Church has dehiged the world in blood and filled 
it with mourning weeds and broken hearts. She has 
forced the intoxicating cup of opium and alcohol to her 
neighbors' lips by the mouth of the cannon, causing the 
Chinese Empire, embracing a population of 400,000,000 
people, to become a nation of opium drunkards ; and 
India, since it came under Christian control, is fast be- 
coming a nation of drunkards. The Sandwich Islanders 
are said to have become entirely Christianized, and are 
universally drunkards and libertines ; and thus it proves 
that drunkards follow in the wake of Christendom every- 
where. And why not, when every Christian nation is 
itself a nation of drunkards? It is said 60,000 drunk- 
ards die annually in this country ; and, in order to keep 
the ranks full, 60,000 new ones must be made : and 
this is not above the average of other Christian coun- 
tries. It is a well-known fact that all heathen countries 
are comparatively temperate until they are brought under 
the control of Christendom. The Indian outcast looks to 
Christendom for his "fire water." ''By their fruits ye 
shall know them." 

If such is the fruit, where is the offset to it? When, 
where, and how can Christendom ever balance her sheet 
of indebtedness to the heathen for the incomputable moral 
and physical damage done to them ? The only extenuating 
excuse the Cliristian can offer for all this is that we save 
the souls of some of them, which is a mooted question ; 
for how much better off (viewing it from the orthodox 
standard of theology) is the child in the arms of its pagan 
mother, about to be cast into the Nile or Ganges, than the 
one in the arms of its orthodox mother, to be carefully 
reared to take its unequal chances of finally locating in 



BUILDING THE TEMPLE. 123 

the orthodox hell? How the pagan child thus drowned 
and sent to heaven must ever bless God and its heathen 
mother for the deed that sent it there ! while, on the other 
hand, the orthodox child which was reared by its mother 
under the knowledge of such possibilities, which finally 
become a reality to him, must ever curse God and the 
mother who gave him birth, that she did not strangle him 
when she knew that such possibilities awaited him ! No 
woman believing such doctrines has any moral right to 
bring a being into the world to be exposed to such a pos- 
sibility ; and when that possibility is reduced to a proba- 
bility, which is certainly the case with all who live to 
reach the age of maturity if the orthodox doctrine is 
true, " whoever marry, believing such doctrines, become 
moral monsters." 

" To propagate victims to the bare possibility of such a 
fate is to act the part of demons." 

If orthodoxy is true, the great majority of Christen- 
dom make their bed in the lake of fire, where the worm 
dieth not and the fire is not quenched ; " where the 
gulf is fixed that prevents torrid tongues from ever 
contaminating a drop of water"; "where orthodox 
offspring vainly plead with sainted mothers across the 
gulf for one moment's relief from torrid tortures and 
intolerable pain, aggravated by an open view of the 
mother's royal retreats." 

In Eden's groves, where spices grow 
And bubbling waters ebb and flow, 
And trailing vines and perfumed flowers 
In arbors form and gorgeous bowers ; 
And birds of song and beauty vie 
The loveliness to glorify ; 



124 BUILDING THE TEMPLE. 

And every sound and every move 
Are turned to one sweet chord of love. 
Infernal discord ! it cannot be 
That life is tuned to such a key. 
Love cannot dwell in view of sorrow, 
Which as to-day will be to-morrow, 
And ever on in endless run, 
Each day but ages just begun. 
Love would faint and fall asleep, 
And sorrow take her place to weep ; 
Nevermore would love arise 
To paint the hue of tinted skies, 
But drape the w^orld in deepest shades 
Of black and gray and sombre grades. 
Another Christ must then come forth 
And preach to us a God of wrath, — 
As He Who taught that God was love 
Was misinformed of things above. 

By no stretch of extenuation, pardon, or consideration 
whatever can the present ecclesiastical or civil order 
known as Christendom ever attain to that divine high 
calling of building the true temple of God of pure 
material founded upon the bed-rock of eternal truth, with 
every stone cut to the line and plummet, building up 
that pyramidal structure of systematic perfection of which 
Christ becomes the head of the corner, or chief corner- 
stone, completes the pinnacle which is the pattern of the 
whole. 

To allow her to do this would be to nullify all rules 
for the interpretation of those figures employed in that 
beautiful system of divine revelation known as symbolic 
language. 

It would inaugurate a principle symbolized by appoint- 
ing bank robbers and murderers as president, secretary, 



BUILDING THE TEMPLE. 125 

and treasurer of natiomil banks, — a thing no one would 
think of doing, not even if these men had become 
converted. 

Then by what law of principles can God authorize this 
convicted murderer, robber, and criminal to be president, 
vice-president, secretary, and treasurer of His heavenly 
treasures. It is impossible ; for God says to it in language 
of no uncertain character, ''Thou shalt not build a house 
for my name, because thou hast been a man [system] of 
war, and hast shed blood." 

To be a man of war implies the violation of many 
other divine principles besides shedding blood; it implies 
treachery, falsehood, hatred, savager}^ cruelty, and the 
sacrifice of every noble virtue to the policy of war, 
and transforms the warrior for the time being into an 
incarnate demon, and renders him an unfit subject to 
become a teacher of love, non-resistance, and the ren- 
dering of good for evil. That blood-stained conscience 
of David's excluded him from mingling in a work requir- 
ing divine qualifications and the endowment of those prin- 
ciples that are opposed to war and bloodshed and all their 
evil accompaniments. The bloody character of the so- 
called Christian system, her war record, and consequent 
participation in all the devilish artifices and abominations 
of fiendishness that go to make up a war policy, have dis- 
qualified her from ever building divine habitations. 

And as she stands to-day throughout the entire Chris- 
tian world, drawn up in line of battle, supporting the 
mightiest combined armament ever known, and still 
arming, taxing, and burdening the people in conse- 
quence, paying the highest premiums for life-extermi- 
nating inventions, ready and expectant to join battle with 



126 BUILDING THE TEMPLE. 

the whole Christian world the moment the ball is set in 
motion that creates the opportunit}^, and to every Chris- 
tian sense utterly demoralized. Is it possible that she is 
so blind to the truths of those things she claims to be the 
exponent of, that she does not see that she is, like David, 
excluded from ever building the spiritual temple of God, 
that does not admit of a single principle of war considera- 
tion to enter into its structure ? Hence its architects must 
be free from bloody proclivities of war or martyrdoms ; 
for God will not tolerate the least contamination of those 
things that have wrought such havoc in the world, and 
brought the name of the Deity into such universal re- 
proach. We know that Christendom claims that this 
present, unprecedented armament of the world is the 
millennial peace. Such logic is the result of looking cross- 
eyed so long that they can see nothing beyond the point 
of their nose. So it is not so strange that now they 
should mistake the peace of hell sustained by force of 
arms, and draining the world's resources, impoverishing 
and demoralizing the people for the peace of the mil- 
lennium. The world knows very well that Christendom is 
armed for mischief, and that her savage weapons mean 
bloodshed, and that she intends using them the first 
opportunity which a mercenary policy suggests. Two 
culprits are brought before a court of justice, who were 
taken fighting in the streets ; they both had open dag- 
gers drawn on each other, but neither of them had yet 
got suflficient advantage of the other to strike before the 
oflScer came along and captured them. Does the judge 
decide that it was only a demonstration of peace ? No ; 
he convicts them, and sends them up sixty days, more or 
less ; and upon the same principles does the Judge of the 



BUILDING THE TEMPLE. 127 

Universe (Spirit of Universal Justice) condemn tliis war- 
ring Christendom, remanding her to the reformatory, 
while it declares it shall not build a house for His name, 
because it has been an institution ^' of war and has shed 
blood." 



128 GOSPEL, OR GOOD NEWS. 



CHAPTER X. 

GOSPEL, OR GOOD NEWS. 

The news that informs of defeat, irreparable loss, and 
dire disaster, is not good news to any but demons. The 
sad and ghastly tale orthodoxy would palm on to the 
world for good news comes laden with the information 
of defeat and hopelessness. It tells us that the entire 
mass of four thousand years of human beings are hope- 
lessly in everlasting burning ; and now, after nearly two 
thousand years more, it says to us that all but a very 
small fraction of the race have so far made their bed in 
hell, where they must forever remain ; and the prospects 
are that it will be a very long while before anything like a 
majority of the race will be saved from this infinite horror. 
To whom is this paradox of hell good news? Probably 
to none but orthodoxy ; and we would not even charge 
them with a relish for such news if they did not claim and 
name it such. We have a better opinion of devils ; and 
they are certainly so far exempt from being accused of 
making such an inappropriate application of terms. 

The word gospel as applied by orthodoxy is a mis- 
nomer. It is in no sense good news, and cannot by any 
rule of what constitutes good news be applied as such. 
All those who receive it as such receive it in an inordinate 
sense. 

It is not good news when we tell the heathen that his 



GOSPEL, OR GOOD NEWS. 129 

race is hopelessly lost, that all his ancestry are the subjects 
of eternal burnings. It is not good news to the world 
that its population have been swept into hell by whole- 
sale, with no hope except for only a fraction of it. The 
favor to the few doesn't redeem the calamity to the man}'. 
If the calamity, had embraced the fraction with the many, 
it would not have perceptibly increased the disaster. 

There is no element of good news in it. It has been 
the direct cause of more torture to the square inch than 
it has produced of comfort to the square mile. In the 
sick-room it has the faculty to stimulate fevers, reduce 
weak nerves, and increase the rate of mortality. 

It keeps all its votaries in a state of mental bondage, 
through fear of the calamity that death might bring to 
them. 

It reduces the noble instincts of the divine nature in 
man to the limitations of its own meanness. 

It degrades its patrons to the humiliating sphere of 
traducers of the Divine Character, by reputing to Him 
principles which would be scandalous to impute to devils. 

They coolh' Islj things at His door which they would not 
dare accuse men of, for fear of a suit for defamation of 
character; for example, they say that He consigns to eter- 
nal burning men for not believing in a being of whom 
they never heard, and for not doing things which they 
never had a ghost of a chance to do. If these things are 
not the doctrines of devils, we feel curious to know what 
use devils could be put to. They seem to us like a useless 
appendage, when such wickedness is charged to God. 
If God can be the author of such working principles, what 
could there be too base for Him not to do ? and what pos- 
sible use could there be for devils ? 



130 



GOSPEL, OR GOOD NEWS. 



This Gospel brings us the sad heraldings of a race oriai 
nat.ng ^u paradise and ending in hell ; thf sad news of fhe 
^gnom^ous defeat of a pure and holy race of beings 
newso the irreparable loss of the grelt n^ajority f e 
woild for at least six thousand years; new of a larne 
Saviour deputized to save the world, but from causl 
beyond His control He loses most of them, "ince the 

fo, med the world into a human slaughter-house ; making 
he human butcher the champion of honor, pkcino hf 
kurel crown upon the scowling brow of the science o 
war, paying the highest premium to the genius of torture 
and bestowing the choicest favors upon the veterans o^ 

It has filled the world with war, woe, and widows- 

wi h deat^^, debt, and devils ; with fear, fools, and tl ' 

It has been the retarder of progress, the op;oser of tt 

^:^'or:rcf '" '"- ^^^^ ^^ ^^^"-' ^^^^^ ^-^lop. 

A tradncer of the Divine Character, and defamer of 
man , no scruples of its votaries saves the oood name of 
those rejecting their theology. 

Jr!f n^T";? '' consequential, bigoted, fanatical, arro- 
gant, and ultimate. 

_ It creates aristocracy, poverty, hypocrisy, snobberv 
jobbery, and impassable gulfs of class distiuSions"^' 

It thwarts the beneficent ends of the divine purpose 
to regu ate governmental construction, to an equalizl 
distribution of the inherent beneficaries of life ^ 

It institutes a paper-rag substitute for love, called 
char^y, through which it excuses itself for overr achi^^. 
the better class of mankind, and grabbing thLugi: Z 



GOSPEL, OR GOOD NEWS. 131 

license of law that for which they imprison the better 
class for taking without license. 

The question arises, Do not all other religions produce 
practically the same result? 

Yes ; and for this reason our Christianity does not pos- 
sess the distinctive feature ascribed to it of good news. 

In reality, Christianity hardly comes under the head of 
news at all ; for, when sifted to the bottom, there is very 
little in it that has not been handed down from ancient 
Pagans. 

The Gospel (good news) is yet future, and will be 
known as good news when it comes, from the fact of the^ 
good things it brings. It will be a gospel of principles 
and practice, in lieu of the present so-called gospel of 
empty forms, judicial ceremonies, and formulated clap- 
trap. 



132 FUTURE PROBATION. 



CHAPTER XL 

FUTURE PROBATION. 

Probation, as relating to man's attitude toward God, 
is another of those fanciful whims growing out of the 
fanaticism of the present complicated system of mental 
jugglery called Christianity, and is a necessary factor in 
the complication of ingenious inventions that constitute the 
great serio-comic drama. No doctrine is true that attaches 
injustice, inequality of administration, lack of resources or 
limitations of any character, whatever, to God. 

If there is such a thing as probation at all, it must be 
future ; for the past and present condition of the world 
precludes such a discipline, without entailing great con- 
trasts of inequality, discrimination, favoritism, and unjust 
administration. In the first place, a large per cent die in 
infancy ; this would, under the probationary system, be 
very unfair to those who were forced to live and enter a 
probationary season, when the very Being who is said to 
order all things, knows they will fail and perish eternally. 

But inspiration declares that God's '^ways are equal" 
(Ezek. xviii. 25 and xxxiii. 17) ; also, that He is a '' just 
God" (Is. xlv. 21 ; Job iv. 17) ; also, that He is "no 
respecter of persons" (2 Sam. xiv. 14; Eph. vi. 9). 
Upon these scriptural testimonies of the righteous char- 
acter of God, and of the inward witness of divine intui- 
tion, — to the same sentiments and the abundant evidences 



FUTURE PROBATION. 133 

of the same in the natural order of created things, we base 
our position. No man could justly be put upon probation 
without a knowledge of the fact, and of his conditions of 
probation. The majority of mankind have lived and died 
thus far without either. These men are born under such 
contrasts of advantage and disadvantage, while some are 
birth-marked saints, others are marked incorrigible devils ; 
and neither has any credit or debit for the mark. If 
Christ was born, as the Church claims, without sin, so con- 
stituted that He could not sin, if he was God, or different 
in any way from other men, then He has no business hold- 
ing Himself up as an example for men ; for they are not 
gods, and were not born without sin, and have no possible 
means of spanning the chasm of infinite advantage and 
disadvantage between them, unless He was a fallen being, 
low down in sin and wickedness, and has from that condi- 
tion raised Himself up to the Divine Standard, He has no 
business asking sin-stricken humanity to follow Him, for 
the very practical reason that He has not demonstrated 
that it can be done : He has only demonstrated what a 
divine being or god can do. 

Furthermore, there could be no possible equity in proba- 
tion, and no complete probation ; for men die in all stages 
and conditions of life, and none with a completed life. 
Millions that have died, if they had lived longer, would 
have grown better ; and millions more have lived on and 
grown worse. According to all orthodox creeds, man 
cannot be put on probation, for he has no righteousness 
of his own, nor can have any. Then he has nothing to put 
on probation, for he certainly cannot put a borrowed or 
imputed righteousness on probation ; and if he has none 
of his own, and is powerless to have any, he certainly can- 



134 FUTURE PROBATION. 

not put that on probation : then he has nothing for 
probation. 

Christ sa3^s of Tyre and Sidon, that if they had been 
given an equal chance with Chorazin and Bethsaida, they 
would have '' repented in sackcloth and ashes." 

But what will Tyre and Sidon say to such acknowledged 
favoritism from the Lord Himself, if they have no future 
probation? for they have proof from His own words, that 
He had withheld favors from them that would have been 
utilized, and bestowed them upon others that ignored 
them. 

But of Sodom he says, if her chances had been equal 
to those of Capernaum, she would have remained. Then 
Sodom has a future claim upon justice. 

Here is confessedly a waste of resources reserved from 
a people that would have made the most of them, and 
bestowed upon a people who wasted the whole of them. 
But, of course, the Church will hold that it was a matter 
of convenience with God, and He did all He could for 
Sodom under the circumstances — another case of divine 
limitations, w^ant of resources not enough to go around. 
The Psalmist says God's mercy endureth forever, but the 
Church says it is limited. Christ tells us we must for- 
give our enemies seventy times seven, meaning that we 
shall forgive him as often as he sins against us ; and 
Job says, ''Shall mortal man be more just than God?" 
(Job iv. 17). 

The probation of man is another one of those ingenious 
conundrums created out of nothing ; gratuitous sugges- 
tions on the part of man in his superficious zeal to advise 
the Deity how to run the universe ; as a certain deacon 
said in his prayer, " Lord, we don't wish to dictate, but 



FUTUIIE PHOBATION. 135 

we suggest." And such is the character of the whole 
riiass of so-called Christian dogmas : they are all sugges- 
tions drawn from then* own distorted vision while looking 
in upon their own little narrow sphere of deformity ; their 
ddgma of probation is a suggestive liint drawn from the 
self-conscious idea of their own dignity ; they infer that 
God must sustain His dignity of character by dealing out 
everlastinof retribution to satisfv the whims of Justice. 
They overlook the fact of the difference between the 
character of their dignity and that of God. While the 
dignity of man is a sham, and needs advertising by some 
such protective tariff, God's dignity, like all His attributes, 
is real, and consequently will take care of itself, and can- 
not by any possibility be hurt. He can do anything He 
chooses without drawing his purse to pay Justice for the 
privilege. He never runs any bills to Justice, or borrows 
any means of her. His resources are all in His own con- 
trol, and were never let out of it. And so all the rest of 
their dogmatic suggestions to Deity are inferred from 
man's grovelling sense of the Divine Character. There 
is no evidence to sustain the doctrine that any being ever 
was or ever will be on probation ; but there are many evi- 
dences that all men are in a progressive state that shall 
eventuall}' arrive at perfection. 

The Church would have us believe that Justice is strict 
in rewarding vengeance to even up accounts, but is very 
indifferent as to compensating loss to the victim of wrong. 
What becomes of the balance in favor of the beast abused 
and tortured to death by the brute of a man? Punishing 
the man doesn't recompense the horse. Justice lets the 
horse die unpaid. Ju>^tice owes the brute creation a 
heavy bill, with the accumulated compound interest of 



186 FUTURE PROBATION. 

ages ; as also the human family, many of whom she he- 
comes indebted to before they are born. Is this creditor 
going to cast his debtor into prison for a bill of five 
talents ; when he himself owes five hundred talents, and 
much more that he has allowed to become outlawed ? 



LITERAL KESURIIECTION OF CHRIST. 137 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE LITERAL RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 

'' Shall mortal man be more just than God?" (Job iv. 
17). In all cases tried in jndiciul courts, even lor petty 
larceny, a strict sense of justice demands that the case be 
proved upon rational evidence by competent and corrobo- 
rating witnesses, and in capital cases beyond a reasonable 
doubt ; and in case of doubt, the benefit of the doubt be- 
longs to the defendant, or accused. Presumptive evidence 
has no right in the case : circumstantial evidence may, but 
it must form an unbroken chain, in which every circum- 
stance criminating the accused must corroborate every 
other circumstance in the case. The witnesses must 
agree in their testimony in the main, or their evidence 
will be thrown out ; and never in courts of law is a dis- 
agreement of witnesses considered as giving any strength 
to the evidence, but, to the contrary, they are viewed as 
weakening the evidence very materially. 

Such is the justice of man in matters that at the most 
are temporary. 

Shall God have less regard to justice in matters of 
eternal consequence, in things upon which hang the des- 
tiny of eternal weal or woe, than man has in a common 
criminal court? Does God condition a faith essential to 
life in a marvel opposed to the laws of the universe, with- 
out one corroborating evidence, and where the pretended 



138 LITERAL RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 

witnesses to its phenomena disagree to that extent that 
makes their testimony simply worthless ? 

There is not one thread of competent evidence in the 
Bible or out of it, to prove the stories of the resurrection 
of Christ as recorded in the New Testament ; and besides 
that, the stories are presented to us througli that treacher- 
ous agency whose distinctive feature has been the creation 
of false gods and promulgating fabulous dogmas, filling 
the earth with the stories of its marvellous signs and 
wonders of falsehood. The Protestant world refuses to 
receive her new dogmas. Why should she accept the 
old? 

In the first place, Christ taught the doctrine of the 
resurrection in its legitimate or natural sense in harmony 
with the uatural religion He taught, and as a fixed princi- 
ple in the ascending scale of the eternal law of evolution. 
He had nothing to do with this vulgar pagan sophistry of 
the resurrection of these bodies. As though it would not 
be quite as easy for God to keep these bodies living until 
the judgment, as to let them die, and then reverse the laws 
of nature to bring all these parties back from heaven and 
liell and reinstate them in their old bodies, preparatory 
to sending them back to their respective destinations ! 
How true this latter doctrine is to Paganism, and the 
former to Christ ; with the same distinguishing feature 
that always separates the two, one based upon eternal, 
progressive law ; the other built upon the sandy founda- 
tion of the marvellous ! 

Christ, in contending about the resurrection, speaks of 
God as being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and 
to prove that these parties were already raised, or, more 
correctly, to prove the doctrine of resurrection, he says. 



LITERAL RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 139 

God is not a God of tlie dead but of the living (Mark xii. 
2G^ 27 ; Luke xx. 37, 38), implying that Abraham, Isaac, 
aud Jacob were then liviug in a risen state as far back as 
Moses' time, instead of wailiug to some future day of 
judgment to be resurrected back iuto their okl, cast-off 
llesh. 

How bus}^ this religion keeps God going back and forth 
over the same ground, correcting His mistakes and trying 
to get a better start. First He makes man perfect ; but, 
not satisfied with that, He drops him into a fallen state ; 
and being unable to get him back, He tries to redeem him, 
sets a price on him, pays the bill Himself to Himself, and 
buys him of Himself and makes Himself a present of him, 
and still the redemption proves a failure. So, like the 
man that couldn't whistle back his dog, he damns the dog, 
or rather the man, and sends him off to die. Still, not 
being quite satisfied, as thougii there were still lurking in 
His mind some sense of perturbation, as though He had 
somehow got things mixed. He calls back him whom He 
has redeemed, set at liberty, bought of Himself, paid Him- 
self for, made Himself a present of, given him his freedom, 
doomed him to death, damned him to hell, raised him to 
heaven. Which? what? how? So He brings man back 
again to this state of rot, rust, and ruin, to pass sentence 
as being the best He can do (a dead failure). This is 
what the boasted civilized nineteenth century intelligence 
calls resurrection, which is simply a beastly revulsion of 
the divine order of gradual, natural, universal, and eternal 
ascension ; a progression involved in an eternal law of 
forces absolutely irresistible, in which the whole mass must 
move whether it will or no : thouo-h men may (like cattle 
in a drove) get turned about and seem to be going in the 



140 LITERAL EESURKECTION OF CHRIST. 

opposite direction, the}' get headed off sooner or hiter, and 
pass on with the mass. 

In the account of the resurrection by Matthew, he 
contrib^ites eight extra marvels that none of the other 
writers mention. He says there was an earthquake : 
the rocks were rent ; the veil of the Temple was rent 
from top to bottom ; that the graves were opened ; that 
many bodies of the saints arose ; that they came out of 
their graves; that they went into the city; that they 
a[)peared to many (Matt, xxvii. 51, 52, 53). This 
account of hobgoblins is worthy of the author of im- 
maculate conception, and is a consistent ending of a 
book commencing with such fables. There is less sense 
and less reason for claims upon our credulity in these 
re[)orts than in the stories of the childhood of Christ 
in the rejected apocryphal gospels. But Matthew con- 
tinues his narrative by stating that there was a second 
earthquake when the angel rolled away the stone from 
the sepulchre. Thus all these most important state- 
ments, that require especial corroboration by several wit- 
nesses on account of the peculiar character of their 
claims to the supernatural, are without support by any 
other writer. But Christendom sets up the claim th:it 
these apostles, knowing what each had written, avoided 
repeating what the otliers had recorded; but this argu- 
ment puts their Holy Ghost in the plight of committing a 
great oversight in not securing the legal requirement ol 
at least two witnesses to numerous events, the character 
of which would cause a man even to doubt his own senses 
if he saw them himself. But the argument will not 
stand even on that ground ; for the point-blank contradic- 
tions these writers oppose to each other proves that 



LITERAL RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 141 

they were ignorant of each other's writings. There cer- 
tainly was no collusion of purpose ; if there had been, 
there would have been sufficient harmon}' in the several 
accounts to have at least given the appearance of truth. 
13ut as the case stands, no certain conclusion can be 
arrived at, unless we select some one of the writer's state- 
ments and reject all the rest, or else reject the whole of 
them, because their stories diverge with such contrasted 
results that if what any one of them wrote was true, tht'n 
the others were at least ignorant of the facts, as they 
never mentioned them. Passing over the detailed ac- 
count of the appearing of the angels, — what they said, 
and of the appearance of the sepulchre, the first appear- 
ance of Christ, and subsequent appearances, and the 
order of arrivals at the sepulchre by the apostles, all 
minutely detailed by each of the writers, but scarcely 
any two of them agreeing in any essential particular, — we 
come to the account of the final departure to heaven, 
which event Matthew makes to transpire on the same day 
of His resurrection, or within twenty-four hours of it at 
the most. He says, "And they departed quickly from 
the sepulchre with fear and great joy ; and did run to 
bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell his 
ilisciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying. All hail. And 
they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped 
him. Then said Jesus unto them. Be not afraid : go tell 
my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall 
they see me. Now when they were going, behold, some 
of the watch came into the city, and showed unto the 
chief priests all the things that were done " (Matt, xxviii. 
8, 9, 10, 11). Thus far this account shows that they 
started direct from the sepulchre in the early morning. 



142 LITERAL rvESUPtllECTIOX OF CHRIST. 

They met Jesus, who ordered them to meet Him in Gali- 
lee ; that they started directly on for that locality, when 
the Roman guard came into the city, showing that it was 
early morning on the day of the resurrection. When 
the disciples were on their way to Galilee, "then the 
eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain, 
where Jesus had appointed them" (Matt, xxviii. 16). 
Then there follows an account of Christ's address to the 
disciples, and there leaves off abruptly, giving no hint 
of such a thing as an ascension. Had this writer no 
interest in such a matter, if he knew it, not even interest 
enough to mention it ? 

Luke carries out substantially the same idea as Mat- 
thew, in regard to His immediate ascension after His 
resurrection. He says, ''Behold, two of them went that 
same day to a village called Emmaus " (Luke xxiv. 13). 
" Yea, and certain women also of our company made us 
astonished, which were early at the se[)ulchre" (Luke 
xxiv. 22). "And they rose up that same hour, and 
returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered 
together " (Luke xxiv. 33). " And they told what things 
were done in the wa}', and how he was known of them 
in the breaking of bread ; and as they thus spoke, Jesus 
himself stood in the midst of them" (Luke xxiv. 36). 
" And he led them out as far as to Bethany ; and it came 
to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them 
and carried up into heaven." Here is a continuous nar- 
rative of a day's doings, and not a hint in it that the 
time was broken into by any interval of events, interrup- 
tions, or inaction, but was all accomplished in a succes- 
sion of events of less than forty-eight hours' time. 

John speaks about Christ having appeared the third 



LITERAL RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 143 

time to His disciples, but he evidently never heard of His 
ascension ; for, like Matthew, he never mentions it (John 
xxi. 14). John's complete account of this matter is 
summed up in the account of these appearings, showing 
that John's understanding of the matter was, that it was 
an appearing and vanishing, and finally, it didn't mate- 
rialize any more. But the author of the Book of Acts 
says it was forty days between His resurrection and His 
ascension (Acts i. 3), and then gives that startling sensa- 
tional account of His ascension, and caps the climax by 
describing the appearance of two men in white, who de- 
clare to them that this same Jesus which they saw go into 
heaven shall so come in like manner as they saw him go 
(Acts i. 2) ; which is probably true, for as they did not 
see him go, they will not see him come. 

Is it any wonder that papal Rome demands a blind 
faith, and creates parochial schools, in which to smother 
the infant intelligence, in order to bring the mind of 
maturity under control to this refuge of lies, that will not 
bear the light of reason, or stand the ordeal of impartial 
investigation. Protestants are grossly stupid if they do 
not see that an open Bible is going to destroy the whole 
Christian swindle. 

That Christ taught a form of resurrection or future 
existence there is no doubt, but it was in the line of God's 
natural order of progression, and with no especial crea- 
tions. It is in the order of a growth or development. 

The essential form of resurrection which He taught was 
the resurrection of thought, sometimes called regenera- 
tion, raising it to the divine standard, the only power 
potent to destroy evil. Thoughts that generate courage 
destroy fear. Thoughts that generate love destroy hate 



144 LITERAL RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 

and hateful things. Thoughts that generate the principles 
of the Golden Rule make the kingdom of God. Thoughts 
that generate good destroy evil. This is the principle, 
and the only principle, of resurrected life. The term 
resurrection is not a proper word to apply in this sense ; 
the term has been wrested out of its original sense as 
taught by Christ, like all pagan shading of Christ's 
phraseolog}', to conform it to a false doctrine. The teach- 
ing of Christ to the raised state means just the opposite 
of resurrection, or restoring back. It means raised up to 
an advanced condition, not resurrected back to the old 
condition. The raising of the dead, and all of the dead, 
and the only dead, is raising mankind out of the sepulchre 
of dead thought of thinking that he dies ; of thinking that 
evil is a necessarj' factor in the operation of human ad- 
justments ; of thinking the rule of human administration 
must always be unequal ; that selfishness must always be 
the ruling motor and incentive to action. These are the 
principles of life and death. 

To be raised to life is to think as God thinks, to act as 
God acts. 

The opposite is the state of death as opposed to God, 
opposed to life. These are the only life and death there 
is. All others are only symbols. What we falsely call 
death is transition from a lower to a higher order. When 
the worm transforms to the butterfl}^, we never say it dies. 
Why should we when this greater worm transfers to the 
sphere of a higher life ? 

The effort in Christ's teaching was to raise up the mind 
into the sphere of resurrection thought ; hence He refused 
to recognize death in the popular sense. He said of the 
dead : They sleep. 



LITERAL RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 145 

He declared that they that believe His doctrine should 
never taste death, meaning nothing more than the fact of 
their coming to understand it in that light. To them it 
would not be death, but onl}' one of the changes in the 
ceaseless evolutions of developing life. 

When Revelation says there shall be no more death, it 
infers a time when the mass mind shall have passed into 
that raised sphere of higher thought, when the term 
death shall become obsolete, and what we now call death 
will be known by terms expressing life. 

The term death is the fruit of falsehood, growing out 
of the pagan theology of the creation. The fall of man 
and death as a consequence — all nature witnesses against 
such bosh, proving that from the order of natural law all 
material must ever be passing through changes of form- 
ing and dissolving, and consequently all animal life, being 
constructed upon dissolving material, mnst itself dissolve. 
What had the sin of Adam to do with the death of a dog 
or a cat or any other beast, bird, or fish? How much 
longer must the world bow to such foolish nonsense, de- 
grading its thought into the bondage of death, believing 
itself to be the legitimate property of festering corruption, 
when the very reverse is the fact? And from the very fact 
of rejecting the vile rot, we ascend into the resurrection 
of life upon the thought-wings of a new-fledged cherub, 
never more to descend into this vile pit again, but ever to 
remain in resurrection or risen life. 



146 LYING AVONDERS: WHAT ARE THEY? 



CHAPTER XIIL 

LYING AYONDERS: WHAT ARE THEY? 
(2 Thess. ii. 9.) 

The cardinal wonders of the world are the reputed 
miracles of Christ. These are the only signs and wonders 
held up before the Christian world to prove its doctrines, 
or that ever have been since Christianity turned Pagan. 
And as we read that Christ says no sign should be given 
them, and from no other source can we find even any 
claim or pretence to signs and wonders to prove doctrines 
pro or con^ we conclude that these are the veritable signs 
and lying wonders constituting the power spoken of by 
Paul (2 Thess. ii. 9). And in order to locate the date 
of this wonder-working institution, we must bear in mind 
that Paul says {ibid,) that this mystery of iniquity was 
already working in his day, and was only waiting the 
removal of the restraining power then in the way of its 
full development. That restraining power, whatever it 
was, soon became removed, and the fables of signs and 
lying wonders became incorporated into the constitution 
of a system which Paul characterizes {ibid,) as a presence 
manifested according to the working of Satan ; ^.e. oper- 
ated upon the Satanic principles insinuated through these 
marvellous falsehoods. 

Furthermore, Paul irrevocably couples this Satanic sys- 



f 



LYING WONDERS: WHAT AKE THEY? 147 

tern to this dispensation when he tells his disciples (ibid.) 
thtit the true Christ, or Christian system, founded upon 
truth, caunot obtain until after the false one (already gen- 
erating in his day through the degeneration or falling away 
of the true) should, through the transparency of its own 
imposition, be revealed to the world. Paul says, further- 
more (ibkl.)^ this delusion was sent them because they 
received not the love of the truth, — a very natural result. 
Pagans, like Jews, clamored for signs and wonders, some- 
thing supernatural, to prove credentials of divine authority. 

And some knaves (no matter who : the fact only is 
what concerns ns), seeing their opportunity, graciously 
accommodated them by sowing these tares amongst the 
wdieat of truth which Christ had sown, as He had foretold 
they would do (Matt. xiii. 26), which appeared .with the 
wheat in the blade, as the parable specified they w^ould in 
the form of the New Testament, and botli have ''grown 
together nntil now." But the messengers of a liberated 
conscience are already separating them by an intelligence 
that has risen above the sensual necessity of supernatural 
signs to prove the validity of righteous principles. 

Paul still more absolutely fixes this monstrosity upon 
this dispensation in his further description of its process 
of working with all deceit of unrighteousness for them 
that are perishing. These words perfectly illustrate the 
actual working process of the present degraded Christian- 
ity which falsifies every true principle taught by Christ, 
substitutes proxy for facts, peoples heaven witli whited 
sepulchres, and fills hell with the moral, the good, the 
righteous, the just, the charitable, the pure, and all others 
that have not subscribed to certain judicial performances 
that originated in the brain of the in^cenious Pasjan. 



148 LYING WONDERS: WHAT ARE THEY? 

Again, Paul, referring to this same thing, says to Tim- 
othy (2 Tim. iv. 3), '• The time will come when they will 
not endure sound doctrine, but will turn away their ears 
from the truth unto fables." And this is exactly what 
they have done, and which has resulted in this other con- 
dition mentioned by Paul (2 Tim. iii. 2) : '' Men shall be 
lovers of self, of money," etc., — the direct result of fol- 
lowing the opposite course which Christ marked out, which 
consisted in the operation of the Golden Rule, ministering 
to others instead of being ministered to, making God's 
council and principles the supreme motive of all action, 
and the " brotherhood of man " a living fact instead of a 
sentimental corpse. 

When religion is simplified to the limitations of truth, 
the mysterious complications of it will disappear, together 
with its complicated machinery and machine manipulators, 
its financial burdens and burlesque mockery. 

It won't take a child long to learn its relation and obli- 
gation to the Golden Rule, and the relation of the Golden 
Rule to the decalogue ; then it will have the circumference 
and diameter of Christ's teachings. 

Paul, in his second epistle to the Thessalonians, second 
chapter, instructing them in regard to the coming or pres- 
ence of Christ, commencing with the third verse, says to 
them, '' Let no man deceive you by any means : for that 
day shall not come except there come a falling away 
first." The falling away could mean no other than fall- 
ing away from their then present standard of Christian 
attainment. '' And that man [system] of sin be revealed 
the son of perdition." Paul here classes the whole Chris- 
tian Church and State under one head, using the figure of 
a man (instead of a woman), a common term used in the 



1 



LYING wonders: WHAT ARE THEY? 149 

Bible to express a dispensational order as a personality. 
It was spoken in contradistinction to the Man Christ ; the 
son of perdition, in place of the son of God ; a usurper, 
an interloper, a great systematic fraud, '' he as God sit- 
teth in the temple of God showing himself that he is 
God." 

Is there a Catholic or Protestant in civilization so ig- 
norant that he does not know who does this? Read the 
history of the popes and their blasphemous claims. Read 
the arguments of Archbishop (now Cardinal) Gibbons in 
support of these claims. Who claims to be God's vicar 
on earth? The head of the Church, being the only party 
that ever had the blasphemous effrontery to make such a 
claim. Who does this index-finger of fulfilled prophec}' 
point to ? Ye can discern the face of the sky and signs 
of the weather, but can ye not discern this fraud God has 
pointed out to you in the simplest form of words in the 
English language as described by Paul ? 

" For the mystery of iniquity doth already work : only 
he who now hindereth, will hinder, until he be removed/' 
Mark now the form of figure changed from that of a 
man to the mystery of iniquity, which he says was already 
working in his day : then there is no mistake regarding 
the time of its origin, but there was something that hin- 
dered its development, which seems to be the primitive 
Church, which seemed to stand in the way of this system 
of mystical iniquity. But it matters not what influences or 
power restrained its operations ; it was there waiting for 
the removal of that restraining power in order to its full 
development, and now fojlows the sequel to this whole 
matter: "And then shall be revealed the lawless one 
whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his 



150 LYIKG WOKDERS: WHAT ARE THEY? 

mouth, and bring to naught by the manifestation of his 
coming" (presence). 

Thus far we have the prophetic historj^ of the character 
of this system, the date of its origin, the time of its dura- 
tion, and the date and cause of its dissolution. But who 
is this the Lord is going to destroy by the brightness or 
manifestation of His presence ? 

''He whose presence is according to the working of 
Satan " (i.e. according to the Satanic order of working), 
^' with all power and signs and wonders of falsehood" 
{i.e, doctrines of signs by miracles and supernatural 
wonders, such as raising the dead, turning water into 
wine, feeding multitudes without visible food, physical 
births without a material father, and visible resurrections 
from the dead, — these, and these only, are the lying won- 
ders that constitute this Satanic order of working, as that 
opposed to the manner of the working of Christ, who de- 
claimed that no sign should be given), ^' with all deceit 
of unrighteousness for them that are perishing" (i.e. the 
whole ecclesiastical system is founded in principles of un- 
righteousness so adroitly arranged as to present a com- 
plete, subtile, deceptive argument of salvation by proxy, 
a religion of idolatry, and a governmental system of in- 
equality, injustice, tyranny, and the promulgation of error) , 
*' because they received not the love of the truth." Here 
is the instrument of their miscarriage ; here is where 
they turned awa}' their ears from the truth, and turned 
aside unto fables (2 Tim. iv. 4). They had no relish 
for the simple, divine, natural, truth without the embel- 
lishments of fiction and the romance of miracle, instead of 
the natural, comprehensive, satisfactory, and complete ; 
to the finite mind it must be supernatural, inordinate, 



LYING WONDEPwS: WHAT ARE THEY? 151 

grand, mystevious, something that: ''no fellah can find 
out"; apprelicnsive, incomplete, an incubator of fanat- 
icism, and all the brood of scorpion chickens that have 
been hatched to curse the world since pagan Rome " stole 
the livery of heaven to serve the devil in." 

Here, then, we have another fulfilled prophecy in the 
Church. There is no mistake, there can be none ; she has 
no competitor in the race ; there can be no othei- party 
to the suspicion, for there was none in existence. Paul 
declared its origin to have commenced in his day, its 
duration to be through the dispensation until the coming 
(or presence) of Christ, and the light of intelligence de- 
veloped in that event would destroy it. 

Now what are the facts ? The Church is the only party 
having its origin in apostolic times and continuing until 
now. Witness her claims to apostolic succession, witness 
the records of history, hear what Archbishop Gibbons 
says in '' The Faith of our Fathers" (26th edition, pages 
83 and 84) : "The Church has seen the birth of every 
government in Europe. She was more than fourteen 
hundred years old when Columbus discovered our conti- 
nent. What a subject of great glory to be a citizen of 
the republic of the Church which has lasted for nineteen 
centuries ! " Here is a remarkable picture : two men, both 
perhaps equally honest, standing at the two antipodes of 
the dispensation, — one a son of the true Church, the other 
a son of the false. 

While the first calls down the ages through the telephone 
of prophecy, describing a great fraudulent power spanning 
the length and breadth of the age, who takes the place of 
God, sits in his temple as God, whose whole authority is 
based upon fabulous accounts of inordinate happenings 



152 LYING AYONDEKS: WHAT AEE THEY? 

through the reversal of nature's laws and predominance of 
supernatural events called miracles ; the other calls back 
through the same instrument, now transferred to history, 
unwittingly bearing testimony in detail to the full comple- 
tion of just such a power. 

Archbishop Gibbons, in his attempt to vindicate what he 
terms the Faith of our Fathers, declares the prerogatives 
of the Church to be just exactly what Paul describes in 
the man (system) of sin : her head, the Pope, is the vicar 
of Christ (sits in the temple of God as God) ; the Pope is 
infallible and the Church is infallible (26th edition, page 
155). He declares her origin to be at the same time Paul 
does, and that she has continued through the dispensation, 
and that she is the only power that has accomplished that 
event. He fully indorses her fables of signs and won- 
ders, and declares that she is the only authority for their 
promulgation, and claims that those decrees cannot be 
annulled, that she defined the divinity of Christ at the 
Nicaean Council in the fourth century (page 157), that 
she formulated the dogma of the immaculate conception 
of Mary, in 1854 (page 204), and promulgated the Pope's 
infallibility, in 1870 (page 156). But to sum up the mat- 
ter in short : in everything do these two sons of the two 
opposing systems agree, and in nothing do they disagree 
in their testimonies of the same party, — the one as to what 
it would do, and the other as to what it has done. But we 
are not dependent upon Archbishop Gibbons or any other 
church member for the testimony ; for we have it much 
more abundant in history so well known to everybody it 
would be superfluous to mention it. But a self-confessed 
witness is, as a rule, the stronoest. Yet these facts are so 
palpable they need no strengthening. But Archbishop Gib- 



LYING AVONDERS: WHAT ARE THEY? 153 

bons's book here specified is just crammed full of the detiiils 
of assumption which Paul predicts, and we would advise 
everybody to read it and compare its claims and statistics 
with the second chapter of 2 Thessalonians. The papal 
Church may claim that these prophecies were fulfilled in 
pagan Rome, but there was no counterpart there. In the 
first place, pagan Rome did not originate in Paul's day ; 
neither did Christ come with the inauguration of the Church 
of Rome ; but rather a legion of devils whose Satanic orgies 
in the devil's dance of the Catholic inferno produced the 
greatest tragedy known throughout the world's history as 
the dark ages. 

But before closing this chapter we would call attention 
to a cardinal principle involved in these dogmatic mock- 
eries ; ^.e. annulling the virtue and denying the fact of 
righteousness by substituting proxy righteousness, and 
annulling the fact of innocence by substituting the form 
of infant baptism for childish innocence. When the 
mind once rises out of the '' dry rot" and vile travesty 
upon the divine order of legitimate principles entailed in 
these dogmas, it sees the slimy sluice of which they 
lubricate the w^ay to chaos, — a condition this system of 
inordinate reckoning is already bringing us into, and 
will soon land us there, if persisted in, as the legiti- 
mate fruit of the dragon's teeth that were sown, as every 
seed bears its own kind. If we persist in declaring 
man incapable of righteousness then he must as a result 
always bear the fruit of unrighteousness. When you 
have to redeem infantile innocence, then we have ruled 
the principle out of the world : we have no standard 
of righteousness or of innocence to rally to or to at- 
tain. 



154 LYING WOKDEKS: WHAT ARE TEIEY ? 

He that believes he cannot be righteous will not waste 
time in trying. 

If the innocency of childhood does not exempt it from 
judicial ceremonies, then there is no standard of innocence 
to attain to, and the invitation to become as little children 
(a condition from which they have got to be redeemed) is 
tauntino- satire. 



PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 155 



CHAPTER XIV. 

PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 

Paganism has been so zealous in its efforts to make 
new gods, that it has far overreached the matter in its 
application of the Okl Testament prophecies to a personal 
Christ, most of which, upon examination, are found to 
bear no relation whatever ; many of them expressing 
metaphors symbolizing great events, conditions, govern- 
mental systems, and principalities and powers of various 
characters, all of which Paganism has jumbled on to Christ 
without regard to fitness, facts, or original intention. 

Beginning with the prophecies reputed to belong to 
Christ, in the first and second chapters of Matthew, con- 
cerning His birth, we have fully treated of in the chapter 
on the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and shown 
that none of them belonged to the person of Christ. So 
we will not take those up again, but will pass on to the 
eleventh chapter of Matthew, the first part of the chapter, 
where it is said John sent to inquire of Jesus if He was 
the Christ. The answer is given in such a wa}^ as to give 
the impression that Christ's reputed miracles were fulfil- 
ments of pro[)hecy ; but in every prophecy where the sense 
is borrowed, tlie context shows that no literal sense was 
intended. As in Is. xxix. 18, we read, " In that day 
shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes 
of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of dark- 



156 PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 

ness." The very style of the language here shows that 
it has no reference to literal eyes and ears. Also the 
thirty-fifth chapter, fifth verse, ''Then the eyes of the 
blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be 
unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and 
the tongue of the dumb sing." Then follows the reasons 
in these words, ''For in the wilderness shall waters break 
out, and streams in the desert." What connection have 
waters in the wilderness and streams in the desert with 
opening literal e^^es, or unstopping literal ears, or causing 
a lame man to leap, or the dumb to sing? The whole 
matter is figurative, and is referring to a time and condi- 
tion of great reformation, a time of intellectual sight, of 
mental hearing, a time of liberation from the halting gait 
of lame dogmas, and a time of rejoicing in the new song 
of paradise found. Again, in the forty-second chapter, 
we read, " To open the blind eyes, to bring out the pris- 
oners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness, out 
of the prison house." We think it ought to be clear to 
the careful reader that none of this language meets the 
conditions of literal interpretation. And the Old Testa- 
ment gives no authority for crediting any of the stories 
of supernatural happenings recorded in the New. They 
have no genealogy in Israel. Their great-grandsire was 
pagan, pure stock. They belong exclusively to the pagan 
family. They all have the pagan family mark and dialect. 
Passing on to the fifteenth of Mark, twenty-seventh and 
twenty-eighth verses, we read, "And with him they 
crucify two thieves, the one on his right hand, and the 
other on his left, and the Scripture was fulfilled which 
saith, And he was numbered among the transgressors." 
And again, in Luke xxii. 36, 37, "He that hath no 



PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 157 

sword let him sell his garment and buy one, for I say 
unto you that this that is written must yet be accom- 
plished in me." '^And he was reckoned among the 
transgressors." ''And they said. Lord, behold here are 
two swords" (verse 50). ''And one of them smote the 
servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear." The 
reason they did not use revolvers and bombs was simply 
because they had not been invented. The Christian 
government of this Christian country of the United States 
of America, 1888, hung four men and sent three more 
to prison for life, for doing exactly the same thing, the 
only difference being that they were more successful with 
bombs than Christ's disciples were with swords ; as one 
of them struck at the servant of the higli priest, with the 
full purpose of splitting his head open, but missed the 
mark, only cutting off his ear. The best thing we can say 
of this story is, What an abominable lie ! To put upon 
the great Teacher of non-resistance, who taught, saying, 
" Resist not evil : but whosoever shall smite thee on thy 
right cheek, turn to him the other also," this libel, puts 
Him in the senseless paradox of ordering swords, and 
then sharply rebuking His servants for using them. These 
two bungling attempts to manufacture pro[)hetic fulfil- 
ments is too palpable to deny, neither of which meet the 
conditions of the prophecy. Both the prophets and apos- 
tles when speaking of transgression in a prophetic sense 
invariably had reference to those under the Jewish law. 
As Paul says, " Where no law is, there is no transgres- 
sion " (Rom. iv. 15) ; also Dan. ix. 24, "To finish the 
transgression," i.e. under law ; and there seems to be no 
deviation in the prophecy here quoted from that generally 
accepted figure among Jewish teachers, that Israel was 



158 PKOPHECY MISAPPLIED. 

the transgressor. Hence the passage seeks no side- 
interpretation, and seems to mean no more than that He 
was an Israelite reckoned among those that were under 
the law, and consequently were transgressors of the law. 
These two stories have all the appearance of being fabri- 
cated ; and one of them at least is ver}^ dishonoring, as 
well as out of all consistency to the character of Christ, 
while the other is little less than a standing indulgence 
to all thieves and cut-throats to continue on in their wick- 
edness. Only look to Jesus when they are sure they can 
commit no more deviltry in this world. 

This is the principle upon which all Christendom is 
based : the common priestcraft ignores all personal right- 
eousness, justice, and goodness, counting it for nothing, 
as against a substituted righteousness which changes the 
truth into a lie ; ^.e. counts a man righteous, knowing he 
is not. At the same time it passes by all good Samari- 
tans and those that have any claim to the fact of right- 
eousness, that have not had some hocus-pocus ordinance 
applied to them ; and pronounces the vile, the thief, the 
murderer, the licentiate, the sensual, the devilish (that no 
pure man or woman would admit to the association of 
their family), all clean and white, fit creatures for heaven, 
all through a hocus pocus, not a real transition. So we 
find the virtuous, the good, the personally righteous shud- 
dering and trembUng in the face of death ; while the cool 
human butcher stands under the noose of his just inheri- 
tance, calm, peaceful, hopeful, expectant, and as void of 
compunction as when, with the uplifted axe, the drawn 
dagger, the pointed revolver, or the ugly knife, he refused 
to hear the piteous plea of the poor wife, or other victim 
of his unreasonable wrath, for mercy, or for even a little 



PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 159 

time to prepare for death. If Christ informed any thief 
that He was about to enter paradise, he simply enlightened 
liim upon the fact of an existing, universal, eternal law 
that does not take cognizance of a poor mortal's failings, 
which at most are the creatures of circumstance, born of 
the corruptions of society, as a result of false religions, 
false governments, and false systems of teaching, thrust 
into the world through an unintentional begetting, unwel- 
come, despised by many and loved by none, birthmarked 
b}' all the devilish agencies of his transmission into the 
world. 

A man in Providence, R. I., has just died of delirium 
tremens, whose birth was caused by a parson's long prayer 
while his mother stood on the gallows drop, with the noose 
adjusted to her neck. Waiting for the prayer to close, 
she gave birth to this child, which was born drunk, cursed 
in his mother's womb, cursed in his birth, cursed in his 
childhood, his youth, his manhood, his old age, and cursed 
in his death. Will God curse him eternally? If so, then 
here is an actual case of elected infant damnation, with 
no power of choice, as helplessly and hopelessly damned 
in its material infancy to all the ceaseless ages of eternity, 
as though he had been carried into hell from his mother's 
womb. 

But passing on to John v. 46, we read, '' For had ye 
believed Moses, ye would have believed me : for he wrote 
of me." Moses wrote nothing of a personal Christ ; the 
nearest thing that can be construed into such an interpre- 
tation is that referred to in Acts iii. 22. "A prophet 
shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your breth- 
ren ; like unto me him shall ye hear" (Dent, xviii. 15-18). 
This prophecy refers simply to Moses successor ; begin- 



160 PEOPHECY MISAPPLIED. 

ning with the first chapter of Deuteronomy and reading 
up to this passage gives no room for any other conclusion. 
Moses had called a gathering of Israel to receive his last 
counsel, as he was to die in the land separated by the 
Jordan from the land of Canaan, while they were to cross 
over (Deut. iv. 22). This necessitated a new leader, 
director, teacher, prophet, or what not, a successor of 
Moses ; and Moses, referring to such an one, directs 
them to hear him. And here we drop the further prob- 
ing of this subject, as unnecessary to show that these 
applications were gratuitous inventions on the part of 
some one, making Christ commit crimes against the law 
to fill some of them, and putting words in His mouth He 
never said, to fill others. We believe that if any prophecies 
refer to Christ, they have reference to Him in His concrete 
character as a mass body. "Saul, Saul, why persecutest 
thou me? . . . Who art thou. Lord? ... I am Jesus whom 
thou persecutest," ^.e. the concrete Christ. As Paul says 
(1 Cor. xii. 12), " For as the body is one and hath many 
members, and all the members of that one body being- 
many are one body, so also is Christ " ; also verse 14, 
"For the body is not one member, but many" : this view 
seems to bear some approximate relation to the magnitude 
of the prophecies. This character seems to bear out the 
application of the twenty-second Psalm, "My God, m\' 
God, why hast thou forsaken me ? why art thou so far 
from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O 
my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not ; and 
in the night season, and am not silent. ... I am poured out 
like water, and all my bones are out of joint [many of the 
martyrs were tortured upon the rack until their bones were 
literally out of joint] : my heart is like wax ; it is melted 



t 



PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 161 

in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a 
potsherd ; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws ; and thou 
hast brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have 
compassed me : the assembly of the wicked have enclosed 

me : they pierced my hands and my feet They part my 

garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. . . . 
A seed shall serve him ; it shall be counted to the Lord 
for a generation." 

In this concrete Christ we see the prophetic plan 
answers to the building: the tenons fit the mortises, 
the measurements ai*e all correct, and the building goes 
together. But, on the other hand, it is all out of propor- 
tion, out of joint, out of harmony, and out of character in 
every way as a personality. In the first place, it is very 
improbable that Christ Himself ever lost the confidence of 
the immediate presence of God for a moment ; neither 
was God far from helping Him ; and as for the words of 
His roaring, there was no such exhibition ; and as for 
God not hearing Him cry in the daytime and in the night, 
in John xi. 42 He says God always heareth Him. 

But the concrete Christ, through its martyrdom, first by 
Pagans, and next by the false development called Christian, 
down through ages of suffering and torture, filled these 
express exclamations: ''My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from hearing 
me and from the words of my roaring?'' They were 
helpless. There were words of ronring among those that 
were skinned alive, roasted on spits, eyes gouged out, 
bowels ripped open and entrails pulled out, and all those 
fiendish tortures practised for ages by the recognized head 
of the Christian world, who has a following twice as large 
as all the rest of Christendom put together. They cried 



162 PKOPHECY MISAPPLIED. 

in the daytime, but He did not hear ; and in the long dark 
night season of the dark ages they were not silent : they 
were the reproach of men, despised of the people. To sa}' 
they were pierced, hands and feet, was literally and figur- 
atively true. Their garments were parted among their per- 
secutors, as well as their other property being confiscated. 
Many quari'els arose about the division of their clothing, 
and to settle it they cast lots. This lottery practice was 
always a common custom in the Catholic Church, author- 
ized by the apostle Peter when he cast lots for an apostle. 
Witness the lotteries and chance games in all their church 
fairs. The langunge of this entire twenty-second Psalm 
has its full counterpart in the concrete Christ. Its suffer- 
ings come up to the magnitude comprehended in the ex- 
pressions of anguish in the prophecy. As Paul says, it 
" fills up that which is behind of the afiSictions of Christ" 
(Col. i. 24) ; i,e, Christ did not suffer the aflflictions of the 
whole concrete body, but only as one member of that 
body, — the head. The other members fill up the remain- 
der of those sufferings. ''And he is the head of the 
body " (Col. i. 18). " Know ye not that your bodies are 
the members of Christ?" (1 Cor. vi. 15). '' Now ye are 
the body of Christ and members in particular " (1 Cor. 
xii. 27). '' The head [Christ] cannot say to the feet, I 
have no need of thee" (1 Cor. xii. 21). Now this con- 
crete body (or embodiment of principles) is the Christ of 
prophecy. It is the Christ or the Anointed. It represents 
one embodiment of principles, and is spoken of in pro- 
phetic figure, using the figure of a man. Sometimes the 
fignre of a beast is used to denote a plural body, some- 
times a city, and sometimes a house. The Church seems 
to feel under special obligation to load everything in the 



PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 163 

Bible with any virtue attached to it on to Christ, no mat- 
ter whether it was the original intention or not. So we 
hear them always expatiating on the sufferings of Christ ; 
and they seem to imagine that He suffered more than all 
the rest of the world put together. But the facts are, that 
His sufferings were the least part of the body, and were 
only a tithe of what other individuals have suffered for 
Him ; for, while His physical agonies were all over in 
about six hours, others have dragged out as many yeais 
in ceaseless torture. This concrete Christ is the form of 
the so-called second coming of Christ. It is a plural body, 
or perhaps, more properly speaking, a dissemination of 
the Divine Principle, advocated by a class which will be as 
distasteful to a large class as Christ's personal teachings 
were, and will be as bitterly opposed by the hierarchy of 
Christendom. 

The practice of' applying to a personal Christ every 
prophecy in the Old Testament that indicates virtue, sac- 
rifice, sorrow, affliction, persecution, events, dispensa- 
tional developments, nations, peoples, systems, charac- 
teristics, concrete bodies, and a thousand other items 
intended for instruction in the world's varied phases of 
gradual development, is gross idolatry-. If prophecy re- 
fers at all to personalities, it is because the person is so 
allied to a condition or an event that, in addressing the 
person, the event or condition becomes the object of the 
address, as in speaking of Jacob or Israel or David in a 
national sense, in which case the person is representative. 
The stamp of inconsistency, so conspicuous upon many of 
these reputed fulfilments of prophecy, goes to show that 
the incidents recorded never occurred, but were made up 
by these earh' pagan fathers in Rome, in order to couple 
the prophecies on to this personality. 



164 PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 

Even the so-called first promise, that the seed of the 
woman should bruise the serpent's head, allowing that it 
Avas inspiration, has no necessary reference to a personal- 
ity, but simply symbolizes a code of principles of womanly 
character as opposed lo a system of heartless brutality, 
which is symbolized by the serpent, and has no more ref- 
erence to a personal woman than it has to a personal 
snake. But, as Paul says of the two women, Sarah and 
Hngar, it is an allegory (Gal. iv. 24). Seed of the 
woman ; i.e. certain characteristic principles which shall 
oppose evil. We have a s^^mbol of it in the foremost 
action of women in all movements opposed to wrong, 
such as anti-slavery, the temperance question, protection 
to dumb beasts, to children, homes for the aged, and 
every good work. 

It is a remarkable coincidence that woman has come to 
the front just at this time, and demands equal powers, 
[)rivileges, and advantages in all things pertaining to the 
welfare of mankind ; and it is the seed of this character 
that is to rain blow after blow upon this man-made, ser- 
pentine system of evil until the head is crushed. 

The head of this slimy creature is its incentive. The 
system of selfishness that now rules the world has placed 
the incentive of evil before every man, woman, and child. 
It is that which leads thousands of men to revolt their 
own senses by preaching a doctrine they do not believe. 
It is that which causes a large class of what are called 
professional men to stultify the noble instincts of divine 
characteristics within them in order to seem to conform to 
a course of logic that has no other element but selfishness 
in it. 

It is the prime motor of })olitical, and largely of relig- 



I 



PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 1G5 

ions, action. It is that which creates the monopolist, the 
criminal, the rumseller, and the drunkard. 

The rumseller sells rum to keep from becoming poor. 
The poor man drinks because he is poor, and substitutes 
drunkenness for the sympathy denied him by his race on 
account of his poverty. Intemperance is not the poor 
man's host or his guest : it is his dowry. It is one of the 
heirlooms of his inheritance that fall to him through pov- 
erty. It is one of the kicks that comes with the curse of 
poverty. Can you stop it? Yes, by changing the incen- 
tive. Can you stop rum-selling? Yes, b}' changing the 
incentive. 

"Talk is cheap." It is easy to say the rumseller can 
do something else for a livelihood ; but saying so doesn't 
make it so. In the majority of cases he cannot do any- 
thing else ; in the first place, he is not skilled in any other 
business branch ; and there are thousands upon thousands 
of skilled workmen waiting for work in all branches. If 
any one thinks there are not, wait until the next strike 
requiring skilled labor in any branch, and see how quickly 
their places can be filled ; and as for unskilled labor, 
there is a standing army of over a million of men in this 
country continually waiting to be employed. 

If these rumsellers' vocations are taken away from 
them, the government will be obliged to support a large 
class of them, either as paupers or criminals, as all their 
resources for laboring have been locked up or locked out 
by land-grabbers and monopolists, who are now daily 
diminishing the field of resources by limiting prodnction 
through their incentive, which is much more devilish than 
rum-selling or rnm-driuking, because it is greatly the con- 
tinning canse of both. 



166 PKOPHECY MISAPPLIED. 

If by any means one-half of the clergy, or three-fourths, 
were relieved from service, what could they do? Nothing, 
because all vocations they might be competent to fill are 
overcrowded now, and no one knows this better than they ; 
therefore they will stick to their incentive as long as the 
stupid masses will buy their thoughts ready made ; while 
the rumseller will continue his traffic upon kindred reasons. 
The monopolist will continue to draw the lines ; the dis- 
heartened laborer will seek to blunt the sharpness of his 
mental pangs by the serpent's charms ; professional men 
will continue to draw large fees for worthless formulas 
and needless services ; while clergymen, with an incentive 
from the same motive of the politician, the professional 
bummer, the monopolist, the rumseller, wastes his valua- 
ble life in endeavoring to prove that this is a Christian 
system, operated upon Christian principles. 

The truth, like all other things of divine authority, is 
very simple, and needs but little explanation, and is easy 
of comprehension ; while falsehood takes a large army, 
educated in the arts of compounding mystery, in order to 
run truth into the underbrush of the wilderness of mysti- 
cism, so that common sense may mistake the underbrush 
for the truth : hence the army of superfluous babblers 
that it takes to keep the lie in motion. 

Thus it is that every reform comes smash up against 
the rock of incentive, like eggs against the side of a barn : 
the barn stands it, but the eggs are smashed. 

There is but one way to unlock this condition, and that 
is to unlock all the legitimate resources intended by the 
Divine Benefactor for the equal benefit of all. These 
resources have no natural limits. All restrictions and 
limitations upon them are artificial, superficial, and crimi- 



PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 167 

nal, and are all the work of the meanest specimen of all 
created beings — selfish man. Unlock these resources, 
and lock up the sinners that limit them, and then the way 
is open to the divine incentive, or at least the privilege 
of choice between a good or a bad incentive. This 
done, there is plenty of room in the new field for all, 
with a wide margin for all that come after. Then your 
clergymen will have a better incentive than bread and 
butter ; your lawyer, something better than stultifying 
conscience ; your rumseller, something better than mak- 
ing drunkards ; and your drunkards, some tangible object 
for reform. But let these lines of the limitation of 
resources, of production and power to purchase, continue 
to be drawn as they are going on now, and in a little 
time we won't need an}' information about hell and the 
damned, but we will be the illustration of it. 

The outlet to a proper incentive must be opened up for 
an escape for these now enslaved to an improper incen- 
tive. You cannot drive sheep out of a pen without an 
outlet. You cannot drive them into another pasture, 
however green, unless you open the pasture to them. To 
knock a sheep down in the pen doesn't give him pasture. 
To drive these rumsellers out of one bad business would 
only be for them to be confronted with incentives to other 
bad business, simply shifting the evil from one form to 
another. There are plenty of criminals already; and 
when we liberate this class, crime is the only substitute 
we can offer them. All general reformatory work will 
fall flat until the incentives are reversed. That done, 
things will reform themselves. All that stands in the 
way of reversing the incentives is the will. All that 
holds the will is selfishness ; and these two factors prove 



168 PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 

that the present order is not Christian ^ but an anti- 
christian product. 

The incentive that develops beneficence in contrast to 
injustice is the completed seed, or the better half of man, 
and to the honor of woman it is the seed that will de- 
velop under the joint administration of the two sexes, 
and woman must receive the honor of its introduction ; 
for in all ages of the one-sided reign of man it has never 
yet appeared ; but now, just as woman steps forward to 
take up the reins, this principle comes, knocking at the 
door with all the scmg froicl of an authorized agent, and 
demands admittance. 

Woman little realizes the part she is yet to take in the 
reorganizing and future administration of governments. 
It will make that difference, symbolized only by the differ- 
ence between keeping bachelor's hall and that of keeping 
house with a good wife. 

The great question of industrial slavery is not to be 
settled without her ; and the seed principle, that divine 
quality of tender care for its own, symbolized in woman, 
is the new-born child that is to take the government upon 
his shoulders, and stamp out the virus of the old serpen- 
tine order. This seed is divine ; but as the principles are 
manifest through those embracing them, they en masse 
constitute the seed of which Christ stands at the head, 
not as the Son of Mary, but as the son of this principle. 
Mary is no more the embodiment of the seed than any 
other person that takes the divine view of principles. 
Christ is not the whole of this seed : He is only one rep- 
resentative of it. His mother had no more to do with the 
transmission of that seed to Him than any other mother 
has to do with transmitting it. The principle comes in 



I 



PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 1G9 

through the mind to all alike, Jesus not excepted. '' That 
which is born of the tiesh is flesh." >so spiritual seed 
transmitted here without violating the text. 

'' That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." This 
is the seed that comes through mental conception, and is 
accessible to all alike. God is love. Then love is the 
predominating principle in the divine pui'pose. Hence 
nothing can stand against that purpose to thwart its 
final consummation. Therefore we witness the continual 
pressure of the Infinite Mind upon the finite, crowding 
it on to constant reform. Before religious intolerance is 
fairly abolished, there comes the pressure to abolish chat- 
tel slavery ; but before that is accomplished, the demand 
comes to abolish industrial slavery and poverty itself and 
the gigantic wrongs of the world. And it is the very 
antagonism of the world itself, the Church included, to 
these reforms, that proves their divine origin, as they suc- 
ceed in spite of these oppositions, and not through their 
co-operation. 

So the utterance of prophecy is an expression of prin- 
ciples, and not a biography of persons. 

No government can be properly organized and adminis- 
tered without those peculiar qualities emanating from a 
combination of both the male and female character. No 
child is born without a mother (although it is claimed that 
some have been born without a father). A governmental 
child of this character is simply a monstrosity, just ex- 
actly what the present government is, and always has 
been ; and Revelation never recognizes the civil govern- 
ments of the past and present but by the figure of a 
hideous beast, one of the grandest evidences of inspira- 
tion in the Bible. 



170 PROPHECY MISAPPLIED. 

A proper child to carry governments upon his shoulders 
must be born of proper parents. He must have both a 
father and a mother, and be the legitimate offspring of 
a well-regulated union. And such is the child that sliall 
be born unto us^ not unto me. This child shall inherit 
both qualities of father and mother. This dual compound 
characterizes the system of principles constituting the 
new-born child, — a character capable of developing, sub- 
ject to correction, reform, and growth, something worthy 
of maturit}' ; whose shoulders are worthy to carry the 
government ; who bears in his faculties the two natures 
which constitutes a whole manhood, not half of it. When 
this union of governing principles takes place, there will 
be occasion for rejoicing ; for the birth principle from this 
union " will be wonderful." It will be the '' counsellor" 
(not dictator), " mighty God," and " everlasting Father," 
because it is the fruit of divine intention, it harmonizes 
the divine elements into practical activity, and brings 
the better part, hitherto dead, into resurrection, life, and 
beneficent capacity. It will be the "Prince of Peace," 
because it will allay the turbulence by correcting wrongs, 
ministering equity and justice. " Of the increase of this 
government and peace, there shall be no end," simply 
because it is the government of divine purpose ; and 
there will be no occasion to end it. The increase of it 
is the legitimate fruit of the foreordination of the divine 
union. 

" What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not 
man put asunder." 



THE PKOPHETS OF ISRAEL. 171 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL. 

To be free from the curse of dogmatic religion, and 
stand upon the philform of eternal justice, never exchang- 
ing the sacred principles of divine justice for policy 
measures, is to have a salvation as much freer, purer, 
and higher than the present Christian form, as the Chris- 
i^ian form is above that of the Thugs. 

And such is the freedom of character in a greater or 
less degree of all true reformers. No true reformer ever 
sacrifices priuciples for dogmas, for it is by principles that 
angels are made. 

The prophets of Israel were the reformers of their day, 
many of them thousands of years ahead of their time, 
and not in sympatliy with the politics or religious tradi- 
tions of their day. 

" For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded 
them in the dny that I brought them out of the land of 
Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices " (Jer. 
vii. 22). 

Here is opposition by Jeremiah to a great mass of tra- 
ditional trash, which formed the greater part of the 
Hebrew worship, and yet the prophet here declares it all 
gratuitous on tlieir part, and a useless burden. 

'' But this thing commanded T them. Obey my voice, 
and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people "(Jer. 



172 THE PROPHETS OF ISPAEL. 

vii. 23). The voice of God is not to be found in human 
formulas. 

" It is not in heaven, . . . neither is it beyond the sea, 
. . . but the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and 
in thy heart, that thou mayest do it" (Deut. xxx. 12, 13, 14). 

Here is the sum of the whole matter. The place to 
look for His voice is in your own conscience, and the 
only manner of service prescribed is to "do it"; not 
dramatize it into a play-act of mixed comedy and tragedy, 
not shuffle it off on to a vicarious farce ^ not substitute 
it under the name of a national or financial policy, or any 
other policy, but '^ do if ; not sacrifice it to expediency, 
but "do it.'' 

" But they hearkened not, . . . but walked in the counsels 
and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went back- 
ward, and not forward" (Jer. vii. 24). 

''I have even sent unto you all my servants the 
prophets, daily rising up earl}' and sending them : yet they 
hearkened not unto me " (vii. 25, 26). 

This is the character of all the prophetic writing, a 
constant contention of the prophets against Israel's un- 
godly career, as seen from the prophetic standpoint. 

These prophets, like all reformers, were unpopular in 
their day ; and with their own people were looked upon as 
the cranks of society, and dealt with accordingly. 

Christ says to the Jews, " Woe unto you, for ye build the 
sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. 
Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your 
fathers . . . from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zach- 
arias ... it shall be required of this generation." These 
reformers were mostly rejected in their day, but lionized 
to deification later on. 



I 



Tuv: piiopiiiyrs of isuael. 173 

Ivome crucified Christ to please Jerusalem ; and to-day 
they eat and drink Him in deified bread and wine. 

John Brown of Ossawattomie was universally condemned 
In his day, but to-day is the championed hero of America, 
lie prophesied the downfall of slavery, and sealed the 
prophecy with his blood. He championed the cause of 
the oppressed, for which the government required his life 
for insurrection. Jeff Davis and his hordes raised an 
insurrection for the purpose of oppression, in which mil- 
lions of lives were sacrificed ; and he lives to-day an 
honored member of society. These cases represent the 
spirit of all past ages. While one represents the pro- 
phetic spirit which the world will not tolerate, the 
other, who opposes that spirit, and fights to enthrone 
the spirit of oppression, and destroy the prophecy of 
freedom and liberty in the irresistible march of divine 
progress, finds consideration and sympathy in the kindred 
s[)irit of his generation ; but he sinks to ignominy with 
that spirit when the generation expires. But the prophet 
rises higher and higher as his new-fledged spirit deepens 
and broadens into coming generations. 

The prophetic spirit, once manifest in the prophets of 
Israel, concentrated in the man Christ, and manifested 
from time to time since, has nearly swept slavery from 
the face of the earth. The force that opposes every 
principle of wrong and injustice, and hence is always at 
loggerheads with the world's administration, may be 
clearly seen to-day in its contest with the oppressors of 
men. This is the bruiser of the Satanic head, or the 
divine seed which roots wherever it finds soil, and be- 
comes the seed that shall eventually develop the kingdom 
of God. It is the wheat amonor tares. 



174 THE PHOPHETS OF ISRAEL. 

'' And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, 
that the Son of man should be glorified. . . . Except a corn 
of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone : but 
if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John xii. 23, 24) ; 
i.e. if Christ had lived to old age and died a natural 
death, His doctrines would undoubtedly have died with 
Him. But as in the planting of the corn the old seed 
becomes the fertilizer to the new, so it proves in the 
death of all martyrs : their blood becomes the fertilizer, 
figuratively speaking, to the doctrines they teach (seed 
the}' sow), and liie world gives them that attention and 
hearing that is secured in no other way ; so well is this 
principle understood now, that the world shrinks from 
making any more martyrs. 

If John Brown had not been executed, slavery might 
still be flourishing in America to-da3\ But his seed went 
into the earth. Slavery thought it had a victory ; the}' 
thought they had destroyed his seed by extinguishing him. 
But when they saw Sherman marching through the South 
with 40,000 resurrected men, or men raised from dead 
indifference to the demands of freedom to the living 
force of power and purpose to exterminate slavery, every 
man's throat pouring forth the song of testimony of 
"John Brown's Resurrection," they had an object les- 
son of resurrection, such as no author could pen, no 
orator could proclaim, or artist picture. That seed has 
germinated and spread throughout all the land, and now 
fills America with free men, and has passed on to liberate 
other continents from chattel slavery. 

Thus the world martyrs its true prophets, and afterwards 
deifies them, as though it was too dull of sight to discern 
the jewel of truth without opening the casket to look in. 



f 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL. 175 

But it always proves costly business to penetrate the 
holy of holies by sacrilegious hands. It cost the Jews 
their national life and ages of suffering, to peer into the 
heart of Christ, and Rome a greater curse for the official 
h:md she had iu the matter ; for beside the gauntlet of 
wars and deluge of blood she has had to pass through, 
she has been saddled with a burlesque Christianity, and 
won the contempt of all coming ages. 

It cost this country the blood of millions of her sons, 
and billions of money, to open the heart of John Brown. 
It was a sad day for us when that liberty-loving spirit es- 
caped from its prison of clay, to make war upon a people 
too indolent to rise up and strike down the demon of 
slavery, whom they admitted was the curse of the nation. 

''Woe unto you] for ye build the sepulchres of the 
prophets, and your fatliers killed them." 

The present generations kill the prophets, and the 
future generations build monuments to them, and a wall 
of tradition around their memories more false and dam- 
aging to their true characters than w^as the opposition 
their fathers held towards them. This is the process of 
deification, which, when carried far enough, creates new 
gods. 

These traditions form the basis for religious systems 
constituting moral sepulchres as receptacles for all the rot 
of festering corruption that the combined attributes of 
superstition, fear, selfisimess, and the absence of truth in 
man is heir to. Such is the constitution and character of 
our present Christianit}', whose principal motor to religious 
action is death : as though this world is not more sadly in 
need of good men thnn heavcm is ; as though a graveyard 
full of dead Christians is anv benefit to this world ; as 



176 THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL. 

tbouo'h life is not a sufficient motive for relisfious or 
rather righteous actions ; as though the necessity does not 
demand to become righteous at the beginning of life, in- 
stead of the ending of it ; as though there is any virtue 
in wasting the only life we know about, and then make 
great preparation for one we know nothing about, and 
have no certainty that it exists at all. Rome crucified 
Christ, declaring at the same time that she found no 
fault in him (John xviii. 38, xix. 4, 6 ; Luke xxiii. 4, 

14). 

It is a false accusation when we say the Jews crucified 
Christ. They demanded his death by their law (John xix. 
7) (which was by stoning — comparatively humane when 
compared with crucifixion), but they did not demand it 
without an imaginary reason. Rome could have pre- 
vented the execution, but she had not the moral courage 
to oppose the mad mob, to defend what she declared to 
be an innocent man. The Jews did their part in the 
tragedy from honest motives, with the testimony of Christ 
that the}' knew not what they did, while Rome admitted 
that she knew she was murdering an innocent man. It 
may be objected that Rome cannot be held responsible for 
what its officials did ; but it is responsible nevertheless, 
and so is every other government morally responsible for 
the class of men it intrusts with the care and protection of 
the lives and interests of its citizens. When a railroad 
corporation employs reckless and indifferent men to 
operate its roads, we hold them responsible for every life, 
and the value of all damage ; and so we do the govern- 
ment. And if the petty state government attempts to 
execute without sufficient reason, it belongs to the general 
government to protect the victim ; and any act by an 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL. 177 

authorized agent of tlie government is an act of the gov- 
ernment ; and any official act by a government official is a 
governmental act, and unless repudiated and condemned 
by the general government it is equivalent to an indorse- 
ment. And we have no record that the Roman government 
ever repudiated the act of the crucifixion of Christ, but, 
to the contrary, she indorsed the act in the crucifixion, 
torture, and burning of Christians, while she remained 
pagan ; and since she became nominally Christian, she has 
only repudiated that especial act without touching the 
principle that made the act possible : and in consequence 
papal Rome has crucified a thousand Christs where pagan 
Rome crucified one. So while the Jews accused one 
Christ, Rome has crucified millions of them. Where, 
then, does the burden of guilt lie, on Rome or Jerusalem? 
Rome is the greater sinner, and carries the greater curse, 
which will be clearh' seen by all in due time. ^^But/' says 
one, " w^hen will the due time be ? " We answer, When the 
common sense of human intelligence wakes up. '' Why 
persecutest thou me? . . . Who art thou, Lord? ... I am 
Jesus whom thou persecutest.'' Then all these Christian 
martyrs under Romish persecution, whether pagan or 
papal Rome, are so many Christs, or so many constituents 
of the concrete Christ. 

The Roman fathers killed the greatest Prophet the 
world has on record, and her children have built the most 
colossal sepulchre to His memory ever reared, and embel- 
lished its exterior with all the polished grandeur that 
money and art can produce, while its interior contains not 
the risen Christ, but the decayed bones of nearly two 
thousand years of '' dry rot." 

If Judaism took part in the execution of Christ, as the 



178 THE PKOPHETS OF ISRAEL. 

head of a system or concrete body, her sin ended there, 
for her children have built no sepulchre to His memory ; 
neither have they taken part in persecuting the concrete 
body since the first century ; neither has she disgraced His 
character by putting up a false system of religion, calling 
it by His name for some reason of divine favoritism : she 
has been spared this humiliation which has been executed 
with so much brag and bluster, blood-curdling cruelty 
and blasphemous assumption, by papal Rome. 

Thirty years ago this country clamored for the life of 
John Brown, and took it ; to-day the children of those 
same people subscribe for John Brown's monument. 
Then he was dubbed a crazy fanatic ; now he is called a 
noble hero. 

Whether John Brown may have supernatural powers 
attributed to him depends on how the children of coming 
ages build the sepulchres of the prophets. Thus were the 
prophets made : they were snubbed and persecuted in their 
day by their own generation for daring to advocate 
thoughts in advance of their time, but taken up by the 
rising generations and made subjects of myth and mira- 
cles, and ascribed to the performing of acts any of which 
would have convinced the fathers, and saved the sons the 
trouble of building their sepulchres. In this manner we 
get the mythical Elijah in his supernatural acts and final 
exit ; Jonah and his whale and gourd ; and all the rest of 
the supernatural happenings recorded of the prophets. 

Then what shall we sa}^ of the prophecies that seem to 
be fulfilled, and fulfilling which force their attention upon 
us by the simple fact of their fulfilment, and which for 
these reasons we indorse as genuine ? We answer that 
the corroborating fact of their fulfilment is the only evi- 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL. 179 

dence of authority ; but this fact does not in the slightest 
decree involve our credulitv in the fables and wonders 
attaciied to them. These are superfluous appendages, 
attached by wonder-making writers, and do not neces- 
sarily affect the fact of prophecy. The universality of 
intelligence, the inseparable oneness of the Infinite and 
finite mind, the entire dependence of the finite upon the 
Infinite for the facts of all truth, from the most simple 
mathematical problem to the most subtle of all forces 
where the cause seems impenetrably obscure, makes it 
perfectly natural and reasonable that certain casts of 
mind should foresee and foretell events and changes, all 
from the natural action of operative law. The universe 
is full of operative law which is not yet understood, which 
leads to calling things supernatural that are natural. 

Ever}' generation has its prophets and advanced seers. 
They are the reformers, and hence the rejected. Tlie 
prophets of this generation are the anti-poverty advocates, 
anti-monopolists, industrial slavery abolitionists, and anti- 
land-grabbers. 

The prophets of the generation just past were the 
chattel slavery abolitionists. Behold their prophetic work. 
No more noble prophets ever lived than John Brown, 
Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garri- 
son, and others, whose tireless energy and indefatigable 
work bore testimony to the presence of divine assurance 
w^ithin them, that slavery was doomed. Their work itself 
was the prophetic proclamation of emancipation ; and the 
dread certainty of its fulfilment filled the Southern mind 
with a foreboding it could not shake off, and kept every 
slave-holder south of Mason and Dixon's line continually 
rattled with fear. 



180 THE Pr.OPHETS OF ISRAEL. 

The prophets of old and church dissenters of the pres- 
ent are at agreement. The old prophets foretell that at 
this tinae truth shall make terrible inroads into falsehood, 
breaking up old s\^stems, destroying false religions, sweep- 
ing away myth and fable, marvel and miracle, ^' the refuge 
of lies" (Is. xxviii. 17). Because of the facilities for 
rapid transit and general intercourse, knowledge shall be 
increased, which shall overthrow all theories which are 
founded in error. 

The Sceptic, Heretic, Infidel, Deist, Free-thinker, Lib- 
eralist, or what not, — all church dissenters, — agree that 
the world is just now passing through just such a great 
transformation, through the cause of facilitated intercourse 
by rapid transit and a better access to facts, which is 
changing beliefs from fables to facts, from ignorance to 
knowledge, from dogma to science, aud from creed to prin- 
ciples. It is a remarkable coincidence at least that these 
old prophetic writers and modern witnesses so exactly 
agree in all the details regarding the time and character, as 
to what would be, and what is, the unprecedented peculiar 
character of these present events and transpositions. 

I think if the old prophets could now speak, they would 
have as much right to deny the present knowledge of the 
dissenters, as the dissenters have to deny the foreknowl- 
edge of the prophets. It does no good to deny a fact, 
for the stubborn thing will still remain just the same after 
it is denied. 

We think the evidences are conclusive, and the results 
establish the fact of prophetic foresight. 

The sceptic says he will not go beyond where he caa 
couple result to cause, that evidences are not always con- 
clusive ; but we cannot always couple result to cause in 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL. 181 

nature. We know that the tadpole changes from a fish 
to a four-legged animal ; the water-grub, to the dragon- 
fly ; the dirt-eating worm to a beautiful honey-eating 
fairy : but we cannot couple any of these results to the 
cause, but take them solely upon the evidence of result, 
that it is so. And thus it is with many of the prophecies ; 
their predictions are in such exact agreement with the 
things they specify, both as to date and detail, that they 
cannot be classed with coincidences. Their evidences are 
good enough for me, without being able to trace the 
particulars of their causation, which is not necessarily 
supernatural. 



182 LABOR. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

LABOR. 

The important judgments of this world are dispensa- 
tion al. They follow as the legitimate fruits of the funda- 
mental moral and religious principles underlying its gov- 
ernmental structures ; and bring forth, as the result of a 
correct or a corrupt plant, the fruit of its kind, rich in 
quality and abundant in quantity, of the kind which was 
sown. If correct and pure, the fruit will be pure, health- 
ful, and lasting ; if corrupt, the fruit of its corruption 
will work its dissolution. Hence a dispensational system, 
or order of ruling, must sooner or later end in disaster, 
unless those ruling principles are founded in justice and 
equity, and produce in their operation the perfect fruits 
of righteousness. The reasons are obvious. As the 
subject affected is the human intelligence coupled with 
the sense of divine right, it will ever be restless in its 
concrete character, until the order of ruling reaches the 
divine high altitude of the equity standard, and brings 
the subjects of all ruling powers to the condition of water- 
level, as the result of an unselfish, non-partisan, Golden- 
Rule governing system. For this reason the labor ques- 
tion is the great peace-disturber of the day, and threatens 
to break up the present dispensational order into chaos,, 
or anything to do away with the present order of wrong 
and inequality of the selfish gobbling up of all of God's 



LABOR. 183 

bounties by a few, to the distress of the many. Is there 
a mind so stupid or a sight so blind that it does not 
discern the certain trend and onward tread of capital in 
its rapid march to the heights of absolute control? Legis- 
latures and legislators, laws and lawyers, votes and voters, 
jurors and juries, judges and courts, governments and 
governors, priest and church, land and water, food and 
raiment, education, morals, religion, salvation, and every- 
thing, even the Devil and the damned, are in the great 
commercial pool, with varying prices ; while monopolies, 
syndicates, consolidations, combinations, trusts, and a 
private militia, under the mask of detectives, are fast 
heading up the world's great commercial falsehood or the 
concrete Antichrist. All this mass of legalized piracy 
(''it is written. My house shall be called a house of 
prayer [for all nations] ; but ye have made it a den of 
thieves" — Matt. xxi. 13) derives its stock-in-trade from 
labor ; hence the persistent pur^^ose to relegate labor to 
a condition of absolute dependence (through eternal pov- 
erty) upon the will of a merciless monopoly, that capital 
may virtually, if not actually, own labor. Capital does 
not wish to own labor as chattels, for then it would be 
obliged to feed and home it ; but it prefers to even 
reduce it to a still meaner condition than that. Such 
are the fruits of this religious dispensation based upon 
the principle of proxy righteousness, which presumes that 
the blood of Christ is honored in covering more sin rather 
than less. So they propose to put Him to the test, as 
the boy said, when he set a hen on forty eggs, he " wanted 
to see her spread herself." 

Labor bears about the same relation to the Church as 
cows to a farmer. The Church keeps the cattle in the 



184 LABOR. 

pasture, while they produce stock in trade for capital to 
speculate with ; or the same relation as that of the chattel 
slave to the slave-driver, who keeps the chattels under con- 
trol by the lash. So the ecclesiastical whip is always busy 
lashing labor into submission to capital's toils. Her 
own existence hangs upon her ability to accomplish this, 
as much as the slave-driver's success depended upon his 
ability to control the chattel. Witness the recent papal 
rescript against the Irish National League's plan of cam- 
paigu. Witness the entire ecclesiastical hostility to the 
use of the only two weapons left for the defence of labor ; 
to wit, the boycott and the strike, — all that has kept them 
thus far from becoming the commercial chattels of capital : 
the Pope prohibits, and Protestant priestcraft denounces it. 

Labor will never accomplish its purpose of elevation 
until it repudiates Church interference, whose secular 
interests are as dependent upon keeping labor reduced 
to a condition of poverty and humiliation as her master 
the capitalist is. She gives labor promissory notes for 
tremendous dividends and vast estates in the coming va- 
garies of uncertain futures, providing they make good ser- 
vants to those that gobble whatever there is in this world. 

As long as labor submits to the dictations or control- 
ling influence of the Church, it will be restricted by the 
hierarchy and that fossilized international monarch at 
Rome, to the limitations of ineffectual efforts for emanci- 
pation from industrial slavery, for the very reason that 
the interests of the Christian hierarchy and the world's 
monopolizing aristocracy are identical. 

The legitimate share of labor's inheritance in God's, 
bounties cannot be justly limited by any law of human 
enactments : such statutes are the articles of fraud by which 



LABOR. 185 

the hire of the hiborer is kept back, and he is robbed by a 
systematic process of legal sanction called government 
(Jas. V. 4). 

It is claimed that labor is regnlated by the natural 
forces of supply and demand. Such a regulation is as 
godless as the damning of an infant. 

When we consider the impenetrable wall of protection 
built up around capital, and that the whole governmental 
system is formed and limited to its interests, that the 
legislatures of the world are its servants who hasten 
to do its will, and watch and care for its interests with 
all the ceaseless care and anxious solicitude of a fond 
mother for a darling child ; no branch of its interests 
are ever allowed to fall into a detrimental, self-regulat- 
ing rut, all the benefits of the world's grand develop- 
ments are immediately passed over to its insatiable maw, 
and cast into its boundless belly, where it generates 
bile, gall, and universal biliousness : while labor is left 
at the mercy of a self-regulating chance condition of 
suppl}' and demand, controlled entirely by the caprice 
of petted capital. Within the last forty years labor 
has invented machinery to the increase of the produc- 
ing capacity a hundred fold, which has been (thanks to 
the powers that rule) turned over to capital entire to 
a fraction. Labor has asked for only a modest share 
of the universal bounties it creates, and got nothing 
but frowns and scowls. It asked for less hours of labor 
at the same wages, that labor might all be employed, 
and have a little time to cultivate the mind, recuperate 
the body, and possibly enjoy something above the scant 
necessities of life. It has asked to be protected from the 
power of capital to place tariff on what he consumes, by 



186 LABOR. 

its gambling system ; it has asked to have the privilege 
of access to unutilized land to cultivate ; he lias asked 
for some common system of distribution whereby he may 
be partaker in those benefits which are his own by crea- 
tion ; he has asked for innumerable things which are his 
own by divine right ; — all of which have been persistently 
denied him. Of all the benefits of inventive develop- 
ments no benefit has come to him ; he feels it were better 
for him if they had not been invented. Supply and de- 
mand, by the aid of invention and a continuation of long 
day's labor, have relegated labor to a condition of loaf- 
ing, tramping, crime, insanity, suicide, stealing for the 
sake of a home in prison, and destitution, to an extent 
that is simply appalling. When strikes occur to the ex- 
tent of 60,000, the employers boast they can immedi- 
ately fill the places with competent help. This fact 
shows plainer than anything else the desperate condi- 
tion of labor. Statistics of the amount of labor employed 
or unemployed count for nothing when it is claimed, as 
it was in New York at the time of the great horse rail- 
road strike ; as it was in the case of the recent railroad 
strike, when upwards of 100,000 men went out; as it 
was in the big coal strike, when 50,000 were out; as 
it was in Boston in the last horse railroad strike ; and 
as it has been claimed by the employers in every strike 
for the last ten years, that the places could all be immedi- 
ately filled with competent help. Now where does all this 
spare help come from? They are not turned out or grown 
in a day ; it takes from twenty to fifty years to make one 
of them. These are the statistics that show the true con- 
dition of labor ; we need no other. 

In all the creations of God the resources are over-abund- 



LABOR. 187 

ant and exhaustless for all natural demands ; He has 
endowed the human race with sufficient wisdom to regu- 
late a distributing system for an abundant supply for all, 
on a basis of equalization of labor and remuneration and 
of distribution. Nowhere can it be shown that He ever 
made any provision for poverty, nor for any one part of 
the race to support the other part, or do all the labor, nor 
receive all the bounties. Having provided no occasion 
for poverty, and there being no necessity nor excuse for 
its existence, its presence is a sin ; and the sin rests upon 
whoever is the cause of the poverty, whether it be an indi- 
vidual or plnral body. 

The Church has much to say about the wrath of God. 
There is not in all the universe such apparent manifesta- 
tions of divine wrath and hatred as that demonstrated 
from the unseen towards poverty, as though it was a con- 
dition that had intruded itself upon the divine premises 
in spite of His intentions, — a trespass He would not tol- 
erate for a moment. 

It is smitten, buffeted, afflicted, and tormented inces- 
santly ; pestilence, famine, nakedness, sorrow, disaster, 
and premature death are its constant attendants ; every 
form of evil in the known world makes haste to chasten 
it with merciless severity, as though they were especially 
created to do it spite. The sin for the mass of poverty 
lies at society's door, through its selfish sacrifice of the 
interests of the concrete body to those of the individual. 
Such maladministration of the divine trusts will in due 
time bear its fruit, and bring forth a crop of disastrous 
events equivalent to the full development of the erroneous 
seed of dispensational planting : these fruits constitute 
the judgments at the end of the age, and, like all divine 



188 LABOK. 

judgments, being corrective in their purpose instead of 
retributive, the}' will be sufficiently severe to accomplish 
the purpose, though they root up ever}' tree of corrupt 
planting. Any plant will grow of necessit}' where there is 
seed and soil ; and there is a thousand per cent more 
abundant seed and soil for Phariseeism in Christendom 
than there ever was in Judaism ; and the anathemas of 
Christ against Phariseeism had no local centre, but belong 
emphatically to this Christian pretence and unauthorized 
assumption. The Pharisees of Israel were but a fraction 
as compared to the legions of Christian Pharisees of this 
dispensation, and their influence in the world was meagre ; 
but the Christian Pharisees of to-day control the commerce 
of the world upon just the same principles that the Phari- 
sees of Israel transacted business through the fraud of 
pious profession and the science of holy intrigue. Were 
the Pharisees, whom Christ pronounced hypocrites, any 
more hypocritical to their profession than the present rul- 
ing powers in the Church ? Were those Jews, whom Christ 
pronounced children of the Devil, acting any more in con- 
formity with the principles of his Satanic majesty than the 
great mass of Christians are to-day? If so, where and 
what are the principles that mark the distinction ? That 
distinction cannot be found, because it does not exist. 
Did the Jews ever do anything more devilish than that 
which the Church of England has been doing for centuries ; 
namely, persistently and systematically starving out the 
nation of Ireland, until it has reduced its numbers from 
8,000,000 to 4,000,000 people? or than the Church of 
Eome, which has systematically and purposely pauperized 
the world, deluged it in blood, and forced it into ignorance, 
superstition, fanaticism, idolatry, and all those iniquitous 



LABOR. 189 

principles that were the constituents of the dark ages, and 
still demands that it be returned to the " vomit"? or the 
Protestant Church South, which gave its best national 
blood to perpetuate slavery in the Southern States of Amer- 
ica? or the Church North, which opposes the abolition 
of industrial slavery? or the Russian Church, which 
treats its citizens with such fiendish brutality? If the 
Jews were children of the Devil, these must be devils ma- 
tured and become fathers. The Church boasts of the hero- 
ism of her cross ; but where is the record of her sacrifice ? 

What becomes, then, of the boast of this sacrificial 
cross that never raises its protest against the infernal 
wrongs of national and societ}' injustice and oppression 
that happens to be local to their own section? 

It is no cross for the Church North to cry down slavery, 
or for the Church South to retort of Northern injustice 
to its industrial slaves, or for all other Christians to hor- 
rorize over the brutality of Christian England or of Rus- 
sia. It is the popular thing for each of these various 
centres 'of Christendom to howl against each other ; but 
none of them have the heroism to condemn the deviltry 
of their own immediate vicinity ; but, to the contrary, 
when they are not the authors, they are invariably the 
indorsers and supporters of the wrongs, while they fool 
themselves with the thought that they are sacrificing ; and 
we hear their converts talk of but little else but the cross 
they bear, when ninety per cent of them take it up be- 
cause it happens to be the fad at the time, and their sur- 
roundings make it the popular thing to do. So well does 
the Church understand this influence, that they have all 
adopted the revival system, so as to draw in the mass by 
the fad of the popular mind, which is no mind at all, but 



190 LABOR. 

simply being washed in by the tide to be taken out by the 
undertow. 

If one drop of water would cool the tip of Dives' (the 
Church of Israel's) tongue in torment of flame, how much 
will it take to cool the tongue of fraud (Christian Church) , 
who builds grand cathedrals, costing untold wealth, and 
bedeck themselves in costly vestments for monkeying 
ceremonies, while many of their poor actually starve and 
freeze under the shadow of their mocking spires, whose 
system embraces the membership of a class who oftei. 
spend a fortune for a single dress, or a dinner, or a> 
ornament, while the very class who have created then 
wealth for them go pinched with cold and hunger, and 
often actually starve to death? 

Paganism asks the question, "What shall it profit a 
man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" 
But here is another one we think is quite as important to 
answer : — 

If Christian monopolists get the earth, what will the 
souls of the rest of mankind be worth? 

There is a living picture of the curse of poverty and 
the sham of Christianity in every town or city of an}' 
magnitude in Christendom, in the sufferings of innocent 
little children which we see by scores every autumn late 
in November and December, barefoot and bare-legged 
(often tugging at heavy burdens, far too heavy for their 
little backs) , long in the season after the birds have re- 
tired to their winter quarters, who only disappear from 
our streets when actually driven by the frost and snow, 
only to reappear again (those that have stood the survival 
test of the fittest) early in the spring, long before the 
earth is warm, in the same sad, destitute condition. 



LABOR. 191 

Truly, ''the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air 
have shelter'' ; l)ut these, the dearest of all created things, 
of whom Christ said, '' of such is the kingdom of heaven," 
have not where to lay their little heads. Christian wealth 
passes and repasses them every hour in the day, and is 
often moved to perform what the}^ call charity, — a sort of 
opiate or narcotic for a too-wakeful conscience ; but the 
thought never occurs to them to so reconstruct society 
that such a condition cannot occur. 

In all the list of the law of evidences of an overruling 
Head, a designing, unswerving purpose to accomplish an 
end, there is no other evidence so apparent as the law of 
perfection. All the lower orders of creation seem to have 
arrived at their perfect state, both in the animate and 
the inanimate world. All vegetation seems perfect when 
allowed the proper conditions of development. All ani- 
mal life seems to lack nothing in the line of their own 
peculiar species, from the raoUusk to the horse. Many of 
the insect species have systems of organized governments 
that are simply perfect, and put to shame a thousand 
times our boasted human governments. In this light we 
see that the human race must also yet develop into per- 
fection, and must also produce a perfect form of govern- 
ment by virtue of the divine capacity vested in it, — a 
government that shall rest equally upon all in all points ; 
and for this reason all other forms must succumb to in- 
evitable doom. And every form of government arising, 
and claiming to be divinely authorized, will certainly be 
tried and put to the test for what it claims to be ; and if 
it cannot stand the test, it will go down in the disgrace 
and violence of its own creation under the law of cause 
and effect, just as certain as a tig-tree will bear figs, a 



192 LABOE. 

grape-vine grapes, or a thorn-bush thorns. From this 
standpoint it is not supposable that this governmental 
system called Christian (founded in false principles, hold- 
ing the true teachings of Christ onlv in a nominal sense, 
having interwoven them with doctrines of corrupt tenden- 
cies to such an extent as to make it impossible for them 
ever to become a practical working element in govern- 
mental or commercial manipulation), — a system that robs 
the poor, creates paupers, criminals, and lunatics, and a 
society of extreme class distinctions, with the ungallant 
paradox that the poor support the rich, cannot stand the 
test when tried for judgment upon the exalted position it 
claims to occupy. As General Sherman once said of the 
Southern Confederacy, this whole pretence is ''nothing 
but a shell." When once penetrated, it will collapse, 
leaving nothing to be seen but a masterly, ingenious 
scheme to coerce the conscience into a mighty executive 
force to ,the support of an organized sj^stem of cultured 
parasites. Christ said the world hated Him because He 
testified of it that the works thereof are evil {i.e. that 
its governing systems were wrong) ; and the world hates 
the man that tells them this to-day, just as much as they 
did then. The governing principles have not been changed, 
they are the same now as the}' were in His day ; therefore 
it is in order to testify against them now as it was then. 
The fraud of vicarious equivalent is the trick act that 
deludes the mass of unsophisticated humanity from time 
immemorial. Heads, I win ; tails, you lose. Monopoly 
and culture are necessary factors to each other. While 
culture studies finance, labor studies economy. Money 
is vicarious produce ; and culture has systematized it so 
fine that the vicarious dollar represents much less produce 



LABOR. 193 

and inuch more taxes to the poor than it does to the rich. 
The part of the rich and poor in legislation is like an 
expert aud a novice playing chess : whichever way the 
moves, the result is the same ; the novice gets checkmated. 
Labor is ever seeking legislative enactments, but very little 
ever comes of it, as capital makes the laws, and controls 
legislation to that extent that no radical act could be 
passed that would in any sense involve equal conditions 
between capital and labor. 

Tlie hire of the laborer, spoken of by the apostle James 
as being kept back by fraud, does not refer as much to 
the price agreed upon as it does to the fraud by which the 
hire of the laborer is kept back from employment by the 
limitations of production through the intrigues of capital. 
The use of the term fraud is determined from the divine 
standard of justice, and not from the human, for humanity 
has no standard but grab. 

It makes all the difference in the world to this Pharisa- 
ical Christianity of ours whether the rich rob the poor by 
the law, or whether the poor rob the rich against the law. 
In the latter case it is State prison ; in the former it is 
promotion. 

The all-important question arises. How, what, and 
where is all this going to be remedied? You cannot 
patch this rotten old system with new principles. The 
new cloth wnll tear out of the old and leave the place 
worse. The new principles must go into the form of a 
new garment or the foundation of a new system- Patching 
won't do. The rotten old system is nothing but a mass 
of patches now. A new system must obtain that will 
accomplish the work. But those who should be the most 
interested see no need of a change. They are satisfied as 



194 LABOR. 

it is. Are not all things favoring thein? Why should 
they want a change ? Perhaps later on they will change 
their mind, by the force of irrevocable circumstances. 
The major issue now before the world in all countries is 
between rich and poor. Witness the long struggle in the 
English Parliament ; witness the struggle in Germany, 
France, Austria, Italy ; witness their emigrations from 
life-long homes, hundreds, thousands, millions of them, 
old and young, severing the ties of love from home and 
kindred forever ; witness Russia, with her relentless, 
merciless banishments to Siberia ; witness this country, 
with all its minor trumped-up side issues, gotten up more 
to divert the attention from the great, paramount, and 
only real issue before the country and the world, than for 
an issue that demands immediate attention, before it is 
everlastingly too late, — before this great universal drama 
shall have lapsed into immortal tragedy. The present 
status has the scowl of demons resting on its brow ; a 
frown of hateful wrath is turned upon society. Labor has 
organized ; capital has organized ; capital has armed ; 
labor is demoralized, beaten, and is fast disorganizing ; 
capital is jubilant. What next? There are 100,000 men 
foraging over the country in twos, and threes, and dozens. 
There are said to be 2,000,000 now out of employment, 
and monopol}', trusts, combinations, and other produce 
limiters are daily increasing the army of unwilling loafers. 
When we consider the present chai^cter of the so-called 
Christian world, with every form of human oppression and 
every great principle of evil that was rejected by Christ, 
represented in its controlling interests and enrolled in 
its church membership, the words of Christ (Matt. xxiv. 
28) flash out with a prophetic lustre, as clear, forcible. 



LABOR. 195 

and impressive of their truth as though they had been 
spoken after the fact instead of before : " For wheresoever 
the carcass [dispensational body] is, there will the vul- 
tures be gathered together." '' Babylon the great is fallen, 
and become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every 
foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird" 
(Rev. xviii. 24). ''Come out of her, my people." The 
vultures of Matt. xxiv. 28 and the unclean and hateful 
birds of Rev. xviii. 2 are synonymous, and represent both 
men and principles. We are apt to see men as personali- 
ties, while Christ looked upon them as the embodiment of 
principles, the plural body the same as the single. As 
in the parable of the Wheat and Tares, he makes men rep- 
resent the two conditions of wheat and tares, or good and 
evil principles, and, as in other texts, he reckons the plu- 
ral membership as one body. When two persons represent 
one thought exactly alike, they have become one as far as 
that thought goes, and the same with a thousand ; and 
when a thousand, from the same basement of principles, 
think alike, then that thousand have become one, and he 
is in the wrong who calls it a thousand, and he is right 
who calls it one ; for all there is of man is his thought. 
Then the mere personality counts for nothing ; as a drop 
of water is one, but is like all other drops of water and 
just like the ocean, and when dropped into the ocean with 
the other billions is only one body still. This is all that 
constitutes oneness between Christ and God and between 
Christ and his followers. There is no mystery about it. 
In fact, all true religion is characterized by the broadest 
simplicity. But our Christendom is grounded in the nar- 
rowness of a mystical insult to the Deity, and a *' mystery 
of iniquity" imposed upon a credulous humanity. 



196 LABOR. 

Speaking of patching old governmental systems that 
time has outgrown, that are too short at the top and too 
short at the bottom, its knees are worn out, and its seat 
all gone, and what is left is too rotten to hold the patch of 
justice by the thread of truth, is just as impracticable to- 
day as when Christ uttered those memorable words, " No 
man putteth a piece of new cloth to an old garment, lest 
the rent is made worse ; neither do men put new wine into 
old bottles, lest the bottles burst (Matt. ix. 16, 17). To 
give Ireland home rule is simply patching. England has 
home rule, but look at the sufferings of her poor ; and, 
taking the example of any other country with home rule, 
the patch of home rule will not cover Ireland's nakedness. 
Her landlords and landlord systems will still be there. 
They are a part of the old garment, and when they go, the 
system (old garment) goes. 

Tariff and tax reforms are only patching the old S3's- 
tem ; they do not abolish poverty. The old trick system 
is just as potent to play the advantages of a taxless 
system into the avenues of monopoly as it is a taxable 
one. As long as political tricksters can succeed in keep- 
ing these minor issues to the front for stock-in-trade, just 
so long will they stave off the only real issue, and cheat 
Christendom out of a new suit of clothes, sufficiently 
large and whole to cover the whole body. 

The reason Republicans advocate tariff, is solely be- 
cause Democrats oppose it; and the reason Democrats 
oppose tariff, is solely because Republicans advocate it. 
The merits and demerits of it enter not into their policy ; 
it is simply the little chance-trick by which they set up- 
the little gnme of stakes, that is sure to run one or the 
other into power. To throw dice would be just as legiti- 



LABOR. 197 

mate, morall}'. If either of these had first taken the op- 
posite from which they have, the other would have just as 
energetically taken the other side. Neither party, nor 
any other governmental constituents, of any country, at 
the present time, have the slightest intention of changing 
the present order to curtail eitlier the spirit or power of 
monopoly in the slightest degree, or to make poverty 
less intolerable, or to inaugurate any honest reform. 
Witness the two great parties of America w4io are con- 
stantly screaming reform ; whose great statesmen spend 
decade after decade inaugurating ingenious reformatory 
systems, plus the reforming elements. Behold the sham of 
their civil service reform, tax reform, monopoly reform, 
tariff reform ! Why is it that all this gigantic reforma- 
tory labor always ends in no reform ? It is because the 
science of government consists in the art of doing things 
so as not to do them. So all these great reformatory 
acts are drugged with the science of abortion to produce 
the miscarriasfe of reform. 



198 BREAKING UP OF THE 



1 



CHAPTER XVIL 

BREAKING UP OF THE ANTICHEISTIAN DISPEN- 
SATION. 

The prophets and apostles of the Old and New Testa- 
ments use a great deal of strong language concerning a 
great fraudulent system of opposition to truth and right- 
eousness, which was to arise and continue for a long period 
of time. Daniel refers to it as being the fourth universal 
ruling power^ which "shall devour [/.e. assimilate the whole 
world to itself], and tread it down and break it in pieces," 
^just exactly what papal Rome has done (Dan. vii. 23). 
And he (i.e, this power, through its head) shall " speak 
great words against the Most High, and think to change 
times and laws." This is a truthful word-picture of the 
Papacy. It has faithfully done its prophetic work ; i.e, 
*'And shall wear out the saints of the Most High" 
(Dan. vii. 25). For more than a thousand years was 
this power, that now claims to be the only true Church, 
engaged in gutting, goring, and torturing evangelical 
Christians, — men, women, and children, — until the num- 
ber of victims reached the enormous sum of 50,000,000. 
This is the smallest sum that history records of her 
butcheries, while it records her as having exhausted the 
arts of pain, so that it would be difficult to invent a new 
instrument of torture. Roasting on spits, impaling, burn- 
ing, burying alive, sinking in mire-pits, starving, hanging 



ANTICHRISTIAN DISPENSATION. 199 

on tenter-hooks ; suspending by the hair, hands, feet ; 
stuffed with gunpowder and blown up ; ripped with 
swords, sickles ; tied to horses and dragged over stones ; 
broken on wheels ; bored with hot irons ; shut up in 
caves, dungeons ; nailed to trees stuck full of pins ; 
skinned alive ; bowels torn out by degrees ; eyes dug out ; 
nails torn off; ears, lips, arms, breasts, tongues cutoff — 
are only a part of the sports recorded by history of papal 
pastimes. This work fills her bill of wearing out the 
saints to perfection. 

And as to her "speaking words against the Most 
High," and ''thinking to change times and laws," Fox, 
in his "Acts and Monuments," gives extracts from over 
two hundred authentic documents, filling twenty pages of 
small type, with the great words of the popes, from 
which we extract only one or two, as representing the 
character of all : — 



All the earth is my diocese; and I, the ordinary of all men, 
having the authority of the King of all kings upon subjects, 
I am All in All, and above all, so that God himself, and I, the 
vicar of God, have both one consistory ; and I am able to do 
almost all that God can do, in all things that I list. My will is 
to stand for reason, for I am able by the law to dispense above 
the law, and of wrong to make justice in correcting laws and 
changing them. Wherefore, if those things that I do be said to 
be done not of man, but of God, what can you make me but 
God? 

Again, if prelates of the Church be called and counted of 
Constantine for gods, I, then, being above all prelates, seem by 
this reason, to be above all gods. Wherefore, no marvel if it 
be in my power to change time and times ; to alter and abrogate 
laws; to dispense with all things, — yea, with the precepts of 
Christ. 



200 BREAKING UP OF THE 

These are specimens of thousands of sinailar sayings 
and claims uttered by various popes, which, in fulfilment 
of these prophecies, have, in their blasphemous claims, 
uttered the very same words that have been used by the 
prophets to describe them. 

Furthermore, Daniel sa3'S of this same power (Dan. 
viii. 12) that it ^^ cast down the truth to the ground"; 
i,e, it wrested it out of its high spiritual sphere of intel- 
lectual sight, and cast it down to the literal sphere of 
visible sense ; reduced it to ceremonial nonsense, and, as 
Daniel further said, it " practised and prospered until 
the time of the cleansing of the sanctuary" ; i.e. or the en- 
lightenment of the whole world. This cast-down condition 
of the truth has not yet been restored to its original state ; 
and, as all forms of Christianity have embraced it in its 
degraded state of paganized sensualism, they only con- 
stitute so many parts of one great false system, — the 
great and only Antichinst the world has ever known or 
ever will know. It is the only foe, approaching any mag- 
nitude of sufficient proportions, constituting a foe worthy 
'' the steel " of the Great Prophet. It usurped His place, 
and claimed His seat, claimed His attributes ; and 3'et she 
has never had, nor has she to this day the dispositional 
traits of His character. Christ was never a Christian by 
any of the standard creeds or practice of Christendom. 
His only creed of salvation was the Golden Rule, or love 
to God and man (Matt. xxii. 40) ; while theirs practi- 
cally ignores both and substitutes a belief in an incredible 
freak. The Church ignores personal righteousness and 
gives us substitutional righteousness ; but Christ said, 
''Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteous- 
ness of the scribes and Pharisees, 3'e shall in no case 



ANTICHRISTIAN DISPENSATION. 201 

enter into the kingdom of heaven '' ; and nowhere did 
Christ offer His own person in commercial settlement for 
another's debt. The Chnrch ignores the beatitudes, and 
gives us her platitudes. The Church practically ignores 
all of Christ's fine precepts in His vSermon on the Mount; 
she courts the rich and tolerates the poor. AVhile Christ 
was too noble to accept ministration from others, the 
Church makes her boast of taking the poor widow's two 
mites, which make a farthing, the last of her living de- 
pendence, and Peter's pence from those too poor to give 
more, — a degree of meanness lower than is common 
among thieves. Christ ignored and condemned the world's 
system of doing business on the usury plan, while the 
Church upholds and practises it, — a system which will 
not admit of a single principle of Christ's to enter into its 
transactions. She has never inaugurated any great prac- 
tical reform until forced to by the civil powers. It was 
the civil power that first deprived her of the power to 
take life for theolosjical offences : otherwise she mig:ht 
have been torturing heretics to this day. 

Witchcraft was born in the Church, and killed by the 
civil power. Slavery was upheld by the Church until the 
civil power crushed it. The leading abolitionists were many 
of them infidels and atheists. It requires the same legisla- 
tive enactments to prevent church societies and members 
from taking advantage of each other, and of other people, 
as it does for secular organizations. Church literature clam- 
ors harder for a speedy executive retribution and capital 
punishment than the secular organs do ; at the same time 
they pretend to believe the victims are subjects for eter- 
nal burnings. The Church believes in and practises war to 
the knife, and the knife to the hilt. For four bloody 



202 BREAKING UP OE THE 

years the entire Church, embracing every denomination 
in the United States, stood up face to face and slaugh- 
tered each other like demons, each side praying for the 
extermination of the other side ; and each side praising 
God when any great calamity occurred to the other side ; 
and, during that time, hundreds of thousands of uncon- 
verted men were sent into eternity by orthodox bullets, 
manufactured bj' Christians, shot from rifles made by 
Christians, and fired by orthodox Christians, and many of 
them preachers of the (so-called) Gospel. 

The civil powers have been obliged to confiscate large 
tracts of land grabbed by the Church in almost every 
countr\^ in Christendom ; while to-day the Church is still 
grabbing large land tracts in this country by the million 
acres. 

It not only takes legislative enactments to make the 
Church do right, but she is just as quick to take advan- 
tage of any flaw or technical point in law to secure an 
unjust judgment, as secular organizations or individuals 
are. And her relations to the poor are simply reprehensi- 
ble and hypocritical in the extreme. Whenever the poor 
attempt to better their sad condition, by the onl}^ defence 
left in their power, her voice is invariably lifted against 
them, and never with a suggestion of some better remedy, 
for fear of the rich. She is virtually a scourge standing 
between master and industrial slave (capital and labor). 
Like the slave-driver, she whips back the slaves into sub- 
mission by the lash of traditional fraud, cutting them 
right and left across the acute sensations of their super- 
stitious fears. 

She never takes any steps looking to a reconstruction 
of their condition ; and whenever she utters her voice at 



ANTICHRISTIAN DISPENSATION. 203 

all in behalf of the poor, it is in that feeble, forceless, 
Iialf-apologetic strain, that says to the capitalist, "We 
don't mean what we say, but the force of circumstances 
compels us to say something/' And whenever poverty 
is abolished, as it certainl}' will be, like chattel slavery, it 
will not be abolished because of the Church, but in spite 
of it. She has done her share in the matter of keeping 
back by fraud the hire of the laborers that have reaped 
down the fields of the wealthy (Jas. v. 4). Witness 
the wretchedness and misery among the laboring classes 
in every country where the Church has held full sway, 
and the most where she has had the fullest control, as in 
Italy, Ireland, Spain, Austria, Prussia, France, Russia, 
and others. The charge of fraud in this text was by no 
means intended to be limited to reaping cereals. The 
word was only used in a representative sense, and in- 
cludes the whole governmental system, that has for cen- 
turies upon centuries, through its fraudulent legislation, 
kept back the laborers' hire, or the share that moral right 
and just equation assigns to the only visible benefactors 
the world knows anything of, the laborer. It is labor, 
and labor only, that bequeathes to the world all its wealth, 
beauty, comfort, and facilities for pleasure and happiness. 
It is labor that furnishes to the world the power to sub- 
sist ; and, in fact, there is scarcely a gift from God that 
is of any value to man until first sanctified by the hand 
of labor. Then moral right demands that labor be re- 
warded with something over and above a mere pittance. 
An equation of justice calls for at least an equal portion 
of the benefits the laborer creates to be returned to him. 
But the drones of society say No ; the greedy capitalists 
say No ; the Church emphatically says No, and always has 



204 BREAKING UP OF THE 

said No : and these are the three rogues that have so 
adroitly manipulated the governmental machine, that 
thousands upon thousands of the sole benefactors of man- 
kind never taste the luxuries they provide for others. 
Those that produce the world's bread, fuel, clothing, and 
facilities for education, actually starve, free^^e, go naked, 
and live in ignorance. Now, if this Church, that is bow- 
ing down to a nominal Christ, would open her eyes, she 
would see that He does not abide to-day in anything 
verbal. His name must be looked for in principles, and 
not symbols. Therefore, if they would find His new 
name, they can see it written in many forms, such as 
moral right, equal justice, the Golden Rule ; but if they 
wait too long, they may be compelled to read His name 
in the red hand of righteous retribution. " The ox that 
treadeth out the corn" has worn the forbidden muzzle 
long and patiently, but has now grown very restless in 
its agony of want. 

Daniel, in speaking of the duration of this great oppos- 
ing reign and godless system, said (Dan. vii. 9), "I 
beheld till the thrones were cast down" ; i,e, the thrones 
mentioned in the context, the last of which describes 
papal Rome (Dan. vii. 8), " And the Ancient of days did 
sit"; i.e. until the principles of eternal righteousness 
don the robes of authority, and takes her place con- 
spicuously upon the seat of justice, demanding a recon- 
struction of principles and a reorganization of systems 
founded upon the rock of right, and administered by the 
administration of equity. 

The term " Ancient of days" is simply another phrase 
for the coming of Christ, only not quite so accommodatiTe 
to the sensual mind. 



I 



ANTICHRISTIAN DISPENSATION. 205 

The prophet's caricature of the principles, the duration 
of time and final consummation, exactly agree with Christ's 
parable of the Wheat and Tares (Matt. xiii. 24 to 30, inclu- 
sive), and Paul's man of sin or son of perdition (2 Thess. ii. 
2 to 12, inclusive). These three parties all refer to one 
and the same thing ; and although they each use different 
figures and terms to illustrate their descriptions, they each 
describe the same embodiment of principles, the same 
order of development, and the same point of time of 
beginning and ending. Daniel : first, the truth is cast 
down ; secondly, the power that casts it down practises 
and prospers (Dan. viii. 12), wears out the saints (Dan. 
vii. 25), thinks to change times and laws (ibid.), shall 
speak marvellous things against God, shall honor the God 
of forces, in short, shall propagate one gigantic system of 
error ; thirdly, until the coming of Christ, or the Ancient 
of days sits in judgment. 

Christ : first, the truth cast down by sowing tares among 
wheat (error among truth) ; secondly, this error practises 
and prospers, grows together with tlie wheat until the 
end; thirdly, the end, the harvest, or coming of Christ, 
the sitting of the Ancient of days. St. Paul (2 Thess. ii. 
3): first, a "falling away," or ^^ casting down of the 
truth," or mixing wheat with tares (error with truth) ; 
secondh', "practises and prospers," "exalts himself 
above God," " sitteth in the temple of God, showing 
himself that he is God," working and developing the 
"mystery of iniquity," manifest by "signs and lying 
wonders," perpetuating a " strong delusion," not a weak 
one, worked upon principles of the deception of unright- 
eousness ; thirdly, ends with the coming of Christ, " shall 
be destroyed with the brightness of his presence." The 



206 BREAKING UP OF THE 

terms here used by Paul ("the brightness of his pres- 
ence") carry m their phraseology the same expressed 
idea as Christ uses in His language in reference to the 
'' coming of the Son of man (Luke xvii. 20 to 24, inclu- 
sive). ''It cometh not by observation [i.e. cannot be 
S3en], for as the day breaking " (ibid,) ; " neither shall 
they say, Lo here ! or, lo there ! " i.e. nothing tangible to 
the senses will appear. It will come in the form of moral 
principles, through the kingdom of God (Divine Presence) 
within you. And although expressed in different figures, 
Christ and Paul both carry the same expressed thought of 
Daniel's in the terms, '' the Ancient of days did sit" ; i.e. 
enthroned principles of divine contemporaries, eternal as 
God Himself. "Did sit"; i.e. asserted their authority 
and dominion, inherent right, and heirship to rule and 
regulate all intelligence to the rule and harmony of the 
Divine Ideal. 

The thought that is now intruding itself upon our atten- 
tion, and threatening to break up old forms and formulas, 
making such terrible inroads into the present insufficient 
order of things, and threatening dire destruction to the 
present falsehood, is grounded in the uncompromising 
standard of omnipotent right and the irrevocable purpose 
of the Deity to force all things to the maximum of perfec- 
tion. Hence the Christian world is horrified by coming 
face to face with the fact of the resurrection, a thing they 
have always taught, but supposed it was a myth, and are 
unprepared for the apparition which, though it startles, 
does not convince them. " Neither will they believe, 
though one rose from the dead." But the apparition 
demands that His doctrines, introduced eighteen hundred 
years ago, be now put into practical operation. It de- 






ANTICHUISTIAN DISPENSATION. 207 

mands the abolition of poverty, the inauguration of the 
Golden Rule into the political action and governmental 
administration of nations. It demands the land for the 
people and the abolition of industrial slavery. It demands 
political, commercial, religious, social, industrial, and uni- 
versal equality ; in a word, it demands the introduction 
of the age of righteousness. 

This Christianity makes great claims to a personal 
acquaintance and a familiarity with His voice. They think 
the}' cannot mistake, but somehow they don't seem to recog- 
nize the voice. They have forgotten who voices the Golden 
Rule and terms of righteousness, and have introduced a 
new order, based upon the principles of Thugs, for the 
purpose of killing the apparition or new man, as the old 
slave oligarchy thought to kill the spirit of the risen John 
Brown, — a result that is to be repeated. The new man 
demands that the sheepskin mask be torn from the Church, 
and that the wolf be exposed ; but the wolf, w^ho pretends 
to be on the most friendly terms with the Master, shows 
his teeth. 

The brightness of the presence of the risen man is 
lighting up the musty Latin of the old manuscripts to the 
chagrin of the " son of perdition" or " man [system] of 
sin," forcing him to seek shade for his eyes in parochial 
schools, and otherwise diverting his mind with perform- 
ing various gimcracks to imaginary virgins, and other 
exercises of unusual activity,- like the boy in a grave- 
yard, " whistling to keep his courage up." The hierarcliy 
feel the imminent peril they are exposed to from the light 
of a new presence, which they neither recognize nor 
understand. As it dares to come separate and indepen- 
dent of their assumption, they propose to cross swords 



208 BREAKING UP OF THE 

with it. While they are very busy garnishing the sepul- 
chres of the old prophets, the spirits of the prophets are 
confronting them with their doctrines. 

Says Christendom, " If we had been in the days of our 
fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in 
the blood of the prophets " (Matt, xxiii. 30) . 

The voice of the prophet replies, ''Wherefore ye be 
witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of 
them that killed the prophets" (Matt, xxiii. 31). Be- 
cause while you garnish the sepulchres (honor the memo- 
ries) of the prophets of past generations whom your 
fathers killed, you reject their principles when their 
claims are presented to you in the present generation by 
whatever force the character of the times places at your 
disposal. But you say these demands come to us in bad 
form ; they do not come through our regular authorized 
agents and universally recognized institutions, but they 
come through irregulars and the unsanctified ; the}' come 
in opposition to our perfected machinery, our wise system 
of well-regulated government and our holy religion, which 
is simply perfect ; they present to us principles in the 
crude, raw state, untempered with the cultured accom- 
paniment of compromise, expediency, or policy : their ad- 
vocates are always peculiar, fanatical, cranky. A little 
reflection should convince us that such is the character of 
all true prophets, not that they are naturally different 
from other men, but the principles of truth upon which 
they stand throws them out of joint with all society that 
is regulated to the rule of expediency. 

If any man wishes to know how much of a crank Jesus 
Christ was considered in his day, he has only to rehearse 
His sayings, and insist upon their actual practice by 



ANTICHRISTIAN DISPENSATION. 209 

Cbristtans, as the only credentials to their Christian 
character. 

Doing an occasional Christian act does not constitute a 
Christian. Hocus-pocus atonement does not make one. 
Acting upon Christ's doctrines as the rule of all incentive 
is the only Christianity existent, and this not as to an 
individual, but with the interests of the whole mass or 
public body in view. Such Christianity will create Ciuis- 
tian governments, and would introduce Christianity into 
the churches and legislatures, and in time leaven the 
whole lump. But a policy Christianity can never make 
progress, for it is everlastingly confronted with the choice 
between right and policy, and invariably chooses policy ; 
and the voice she rejects is the uncultured voice, the raw 
material of crude principles, the old voice of the 
Ancient of days, as old as Jehovah. It is the voice that 
eighteen centuries ago rent the nation, that called the 
government a den of thieves, and called its rulers hypo- 
crites, sons of the Devil, and other epithets that would be 
considered irreverent in these days. 

That voice is as potent to break up governments and 
dispensational systems now as then, and it demands the 
inauguration of the same principles it did then, and with 
this difference, that it is now creating the force that will 
enthrone the principles. 

That voice is a national disturber ; it comes not to 
bring peace but a sword, because it runs counter to their 
system of expediencies, and as it will not bend to the 
policy of nations, the nations must break to it. That 
voice now calls for facts and proofs of everything. It 
says to religion. Either substantiate your dogmas or 
drop them. It says to governments, Make those vir- 



210 BREAKING UP OF THE 

tnes verities which you have so long held in pretence ; 
i,e, unshackle Freedom, unveil Liberty, and remove the 
blinders from Justice's eyes, make her to see what is 
right, that she may do it. Abolish industrial slavery be- 
fore you talk more of freedom ; make the purchasing 
power of the poor man's dollar equal to that of the rich, 
or say no more about equality. Give the poor equal 
power to prosecute and defend cases in courts of justice 
with the rich^ or shut up about your just administrations : 
in short, it says to both Church and State : Reform, Re- 
verse, Reconstruct, 

It is said that in the Eastern countries there are folds 
in which several shepherds nightly herd their sheep to- 
gether, mixing several flocks promiscuous!}', and each 
shepherd has a different mode of calling his sheep, so that 
when they separate in the morning, each shepherd sounds 
his peculiar call, and every sheep knows the voice of its 
own shepherd, and follows it. 

The peculiar voice of truth is quite distinct from all 
other voices ; it is still and small, and comes into the fold 
of conscience, and calls out its own sheep by names, as, 
Love, Justice, Equality, Righteousness, and so on through- 
out the whole flock : every sheep is a divine attribute, and 
follows the good shepherd (Truth). The policy shepherd, 
h3pocrite, politician, churchman, aristocrat, hierarch, au- 
tocrat, oligarch, monopolist, nor any of the selGsh brood, 
can call one of these sheep from the fold. The world is 
now full of voices. In its grand process of disintegra- 
tion everything is being voiced. In the dispensational 
breaking up many are endeavoring to save their wares, 
while many others are seeking to grasp new securities to 
iide them over the deluo-e. The confusion of voices echoes 



ANTICHRISTIAN DISPENSATION. iill 

over the turbulent waters. From all quarters — from 
those struggling against the elements, and others endeav- 
oring to steer their crafts into safe waters — many voices 
are being uttered, and many ears are being deceived by 
listening to the voice of error. And Church and State 
are ever listening to the delusive voice of policy stretch- 
ing forward, eager to catch its first indications of the 
course to pursue, ignoring as a thing impracticable, the 
voice of truth ; but true to all past precedents of Church 
and State, from that of Caiaphas and Pilate to the present 
time, they proceed to destroy the prophets of present 
truth, and hush the voice of conscience, while they gar- 
nish the memories (sepulchres) of the old prophets with 
accounts of wondrous characters, and marvellous doings 
that never occurred. 

The very stand they take upon the moral questions of 
the day proves of them just what Christ said to the Phari- 
sees of the same matter, that if they had lived in the 
days of their fathers, they would have been foremost in 
killing the prophets the}' seek now to honor. It is the 
disposition to persecute and destroy those that do not think 
•as we do that has killed all the prophets. That was the 
disposition by which Rome and Jerusalem killed Christ ; 
and that has been the current spirit in the Church from 
Constantine to now ; and if the personal Christ should 
appear in the world now, the Church would be His bitter- 
est enemy, because modern hypocrisy won't stand being 
shown up with any better grace than ancient hypocrisy 
did. And the true Christ, with the free spirit, and intol- 
lerable hatred for hypocrites, would hold up this eighteen- 
hundred-years-old sham in such a light as no mortal ever 
saw before. It is fortunate for her that the personal 



212 BREAKING UP OF THE 

Christ came at the end of the Jewish age instead of at 
the end of this age ; otherwise her career would have been 
drawn out in the form of a word-picture that would blush 
the cheeks of humanity to think that they belonged to a 
race of beings in whom such blasphemous corruption was 
possible. It is no wonder the Church wants her record 
expunged from history and from the knowledge of her 
children. The world contains no other such history of 
rottenness. Witness Lea's late •' History of the Inquisi- 
tion," published by Harper Brothers, Franklin Square, 
New York, in three volumes, covering over eighteen hun- 
dred pages. Read Fox's works, his '' Book of Martyrs," 
and a work called ''Fox's Acts and Monuments." Read 
general history. Read Fulton, and then hunt out and 
read those records that the law prohibits from circulating 
on account of their filthiness. And then read the apolo- 
gies and denials the cardinals and bishops are making in 
behalf of this vulture's brood, and see whether you can 
tell modern hypocris}' when you see it, and whether you 
do not think it high time that an institution with such a 
rank record should come to an end ; and look around you 
and see if you do not see signs on every hand of the 
breaking up of this Antichristian delusion, and if you 
do not find it in your heart to thank God for the destruc- 
tion of an institution bearing in its constituency the possi- 
bility of such a record, and make up your mind to throw 
overboard the part you hold in relation to it, that you may 
join in making common cause against it, remembering that 
all dogmas incorporated into Protestant creeds are bor- 
rowed from the Papacy, and have no higher authority.. 
If you wish to destroy Catholic dogmas, you must destroy 
Protestant dogmas first, which are of the same class, and 



ANTICHRISTIAN DISPENSATION. 213 

have no more foundation in truth than hers. It is Prot- 
estantism that is being the most perceptibly affected at 
the preseut time, and will have to go first to clear the way 
for the crusades against Papalism. Popery, being an old 
war-horse, "sniffs the battle from afar." Through her 
sagacity she sees the signs of the coming onslaught of 
intelligent forces. Witness her skirmishes through her 
cardinals with Ingersoll and others, and how she gets de- 
feated at every point. She had much rather fight with 
carnal weapons, but she has lost her sword and sceptre. 
Witness her endeavors to throw up breastworks of igno- 
rance and bigotry around her subjects by intrenching her 
children behind the parochial school walls; witness her 
unprecedented activity in cei*emonial mummery and primi- 
tive monkeying ; witness her efforts to make it appear that 
an indulgence doesn't mean an indulo-ence. But all this 
revoltino' silliness is doins; more to sicken the intellioeuce 
and common sense than to strengthen the cause to the 
general public, and causing thinking minds to recognize 
the pagan character of the beast of dragon origin and its 
false prophet rider, of which nothing could be plainer. 
But to those that do not see the inroads that the growing 
intelligence of the last ten years has made in the breaking 
up of Church fallacies and Antichristian dogmas, they will 
not have ver}^ much longer to wait before it will be too 
clear to question : to those that rejoice in the fact, the 
present progress is all they could anticipate. 

When Catholicism received its mortal wound from the 
sword of reason, it would have died then and there, but 
for the birth of Protestantism, which, by approving its 
pagan dogmas and ancient traditions, gave it a new lease 
of life, and threw over it the mantle of respectability ; and 



214 BREAKING UP OF THE 

in this sense was created the image of the beast ; i.e. the 
Church of Rome as it stands to-day, unhorsed and un- 
sabred, is a mere image of its former greatness. 

The Protestant Church is the only institution having 
the " power to give life to the image of the beast, that 
the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that 
as many as would not worship the image of the beast 
should be killed " (Rev. xiii. 15) ; i.e, excommunicated, 
killed in a spiritual sense: example, the Pope excom- 
municating Dr. McGlynn and all others that will not 
worship the Roman image. ''And he causeth all, both 
small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive 
a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads" (Rev. 
xiii. 16). All that come into the Church receive the mark 
of the right hand of fellowship ; and if they are sufficiently 
intelligent, they receive the logic of their creeds in their 
foreheads, the region of their intellectual capacity. " And 
that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark 
or the name of the beast, or the number of his name " 
(Rev. xiii. 17). The Church claims that no man cnn 
transact spiritual business, unless he bears the mark in 
his right hand, i.e. is a member of the body of the beast, 
by this initiation form, or by indorsing all the traditional 
dogmas that constitute the institution known by the name 
of the "holy catholic Church," the name that many of the 
Protestant churches indorse. The Episcopalian Church 
creed says, "I believe in the hol}^ catholic Church"; the 
Methodist Episcopal says, " I believe in the holy catholic 
Church " ; and most of the evangelical churches believe in 
the holy catholic Church. Thus it is evident that Prot- 
estants hold the name to which all are made to subscribe 
before they can buy or sell, or transact holy business. 



I 



ANTICHKISTIAN DISPENSATION. 215 

Hence before Catholicism can be extinguished, that 
which holds it up must be put awa}'. Protestantism was 
not tlie first cause of Catholicism ; but it is the present 
continuing cause, and is all that gives it any reasonable 
excuse for existing. 

It is the Samson that has had its eyes put out for 
coquetting with its Delilah ; and when it puts its hands to 
the pillars of the bogus temple, it will come down, crush- 
ing both Samson and the Philistines, or both Protestant- 
ism and Catholicism. 



216 REVELATION. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

REVELATION. 

Whenever the presumptive wisdom that claims to bask 
in the sunshine of Jehovah's solar luminaries is interro- 
gated for information concerning the Apocalypse, the in- 
variable reply is given that it is a sealed book of hidden 
mystery, never intended to be understood. But the author 
declares it to be a revelation — to reveal a thing is to 
have it understood. And, furthermore, the author de- 
clares that it is an unsealed book (Rev. xxii. 10), imply- 
ing that it is open to the understanding. 

''For the time is at hand;" ^.e. the dispensational 
events and occurrences to which it referred had already 
begun. It was at once a catalogue of the great serio- 
comic drama which was about to be inaugurated, in 
which the Church was to be both comedian and tragedian. 

As the Apocalypse is a revelation of the Church more 
than to the Church, she has not yet discovered the fact 
that she is the leading star in the great drama. 

In vain we look anywhere else for the slightest appear- 
ance of the characteristics described ; but when we look 
to her, she perfectly meets every point described in the 
prophetic figures, and consequently she must be the part}' 
intended in the prophecies. 

The work is addressed to her under the head of the 
seven churches of Asia ; then follows the dispensational 



REVELATION. 217 

descriptive allegories, showing the rise and fall of the 
Chnrch, the extent of her dominions, her composition, 
growth, power, and the combined forces that constituted 
her strength. These were caricatured as the dragon, tlie 
beast, and the false prophet. The dragon stands for 
pagan Rome, the beast for the civil government, and the 
false prophet for this bogus Christianity. Such is the 
trinity that constitutes what is understood as Christendom, 
but is in reality the Antichrist or Antichristian body. 

"And I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon, 
and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth 
of the false prophet, three unclean spirits, like frogs : for 
they are spirits of devils, working signs; which go forth to 
the kings of the earth, and of the whole world, to gather 
them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty " 
(Rev. xvi. 13, 14). 

Out of the mouths of this trinity have issued all the 
dogmas of Christendom (not all at once, but by leaps, 
like frogs). First, of the immaculate conception of a 
man ; some centuries later on they took another leap and 
declared the immaculate conception of a woman ; and 
later, another leap, and they promulgate the infallibility 
dogma. These are the three cardinal leaps of these 
unclean spirits, or caricature frogs ; but their whole 
dogmatic system has been made up in this same form, 
characterized by leaps, from the Council of Nice, a.d. 
325, when they canonized the Bible by vote, to that of 
Rome, when they made Pius IX. infallible by the same 
process, a.d. 1870. Thus does the Church fill the pic- 
ture of the frogs perfectly, both in the leaping propensity 
and the source from which they issued. "For they are 
spirits of devils, working signs." From the fact that 



218 REVELATION. 

Christ declared that no sign should be given, we con- 
clude that this same power (that does not scruple to 
manufacture immaculate conceptions of men and women, 
and infallibility dogmas, at will, and scores of other im- 
positions) is the author of all the reputed " signs and 
lying wonders " (2 Thess. ii. 9) in the New Testament. 
Thus she fills the third specification in the allegory. 

Has she gone forth to the kiugs of the earth and to the 
whole world? See the claims of Archbishop Gibbons, in 
the "Faith of Our Fathers" (26th edition, page 52), and 
also the claims of all Christendom. The Church is the 
only party that can claim this accomplishment ; it is her 
especial prerogative and peculiar distinction. The kings 
of the earth have embraced her doctrines, and she has 
carried them to the uttermost parts of the world, and 
"gathered the people," not to the pure, simple doctrines 
of divine truth, but to a mass of mystical muddle of her 
own creation, so antagonistic to the divine will and pur- 
pose, that they constitute the great contending force of 
opposition in the great struggle, here designated ''the 
battle of the great day of God Almighty." The mighty 
friction and clashing of forces hurled against each other 
in the form of contending principles of right and wrong, 
truth and error, good and evil ; generating heat (of pas- 
sion), combustion (of pent-up wrath), and fire (''already 
kindled") ; threatening every hour to burst forth in one 
universal conflagration of fiendish fury, is the result of 
this going forth of the " spirits of devils" (the language 
is the Bible's) to the whole world, and gathering them to 
the very condition that has wrought the results legitimate 
to the work, the fulfilled prophecy. "The fruits of a cor-* 
rupt tree" (Matt. vii. 18); "a house built upon the 



REVELATION. 219 

sands " ; of idle tales for the entertainmeDt of curiosity- 
mongers ; a nominal Christendom, — onh', without one 
single operative principle of Christ's wrought into its 
whole gov^ernmental working system ; a great commercial 
gambling-house ; a condition of systematized robbery ; " a 
den of thieves " ; '' the man [system] of sin " ; " the anti- 
christ"; "son of perdition"; ''doctrines of devils," — 
these are its Bible definitions, and are among the strong- 
est proofs of inspiration. 

Passing on to the nineteenth verse, we come to these 
words: "And the great city [system] was divided into 
three parts." Just so; the Catholic, the Greek, and the 
Protestant. Was ever language more definite than this ? 
But if it were unsupported by the context, its specific 
importance would be insignificant. But having the full 
support of the two following chapters, the text becomes 
a strong link in locating the prophetic figure upon the 
Church. 

The world does not present another case of symbolic 
language so pertinent in its statements, so graphic in its 
illustrations, and so personal to a subject, and unmistak- 
able in its designation, as the seventeenth and eighteenth 
chapters of Revelation. The history of the Church, here 
so minutely drawn and truthful to character, cannot be 
transferred to any other object, for nothing else was ever 
made that could fill the bill. It belongs especially to her 
unique peculiarities ; it is hers, and hers alone ; it is hers 
or nothing. If it is nothing, then all prophecy is nothing. 
In vain has the Church sought for the heirs to this inheri- 
tance, and found them not ; no one ever appeared to con- 
test the claim. But the Catholics and Protestants have 
both very considerately conceded it to each other ; but 



220 REVELATION. 

each concession contained only half the truth in the matter. 
Add the two halves together, and we have the sum of the 
whole matter. They saw it in each other because it was 
there. They made the mistake of reckoning a body under 
protest as a separate body. A Protestant is not necessa- 
rily a separate body, but may be only a faction under pro- 
test. When it withdraws, it is no longer under protest, 
but a separate body. Protestants cannot withdraw from 
Catholics while they hold their cardinal doctrines ; hence 
the name Protestant sticks to them by inspiration. 

Passing on to the fifteenth verse, we read: "The 
waters which thou sawest, where the harlot sitteth, are 
peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues." Here 
again we are pointed to the only institution that has ever 
held this position. Under the figures here described, and 
the eighteenth Averse, "• The woman which thou sawest is 
that great city [system], which reigneth over the kings of 
the earth." The Church is the only institution that has 
ever done this. Here again is the index finger pointing- 
straight at the Church. Passing to the eighteenth chap- 
ter, second verse, we read that this "Babylon is become 
the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, 
and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." This is 
the condition the Church was to present when the angel 
spoken of in the first verse was said to have come down 
and lightened the earth with his glory. That condition of 
the Church is its present condition ; that light is the pres- 
ent light of reason spreadiiig over the earth, and that is. 
the light that is revealing the filth of Babylon. 

In the fourth verse we read: "Come out of her, m.y 
people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye 
receive not of her plagues." What ! come out of the 



» 



KEVELATION. 221 

Church? That is exactly what it says. lu the eighth 
verse we read, '• Therefore shall her plagues come in one 
clay " ; and in the tenth verse we read, ''In one hour " ; 
and in the seventeenth verse we read, ''In one hour"; 
and again in the nineteenth verse we read, " In one hour 
is she made desolate " ; and the twentieth verse calls on 
heaven, the holy prophets and apostles to rejoice over 
the fact of her sudden collapse " ; and the twenty-first 
verse reads, "And a mighty angel took up a stone like 
a great mill-stone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus 
with violence shall that great city [system] Babylon be 
thrown down, and shall be found no more at all." Thus 
we gather from the prophecy that in the midst of the dis- 
criminating light of the present time the old pagan Baby- 
lon, by some violent shock from some sonrce, is going to 
meet with a sudden collapse, like an inflated balloon when 
one spark of fire lights up its interior. 

In this case, we think we have traced the prophetic 
delineation of Revelation far enough to show that it is the 
Church that is the subject of (what Gladstone would con- 
sider of Ingersoll) the " irreverent Innguage " of Revela- 
tion. We do not believe the author of Revelation intended 
it to be any sealed mystery ; if he had, he would not have 
entitled it an open revelation and pronounced blessings on 
those that read and hear it. 

It appears to be nothing more than a highly figurative 
description of the general cliaracter of the dispensation of 
its chief events and varied conditions of its civil and relig- 
ious development, comprising nothing but what any intelli- 
gent person familiar with history could discover by a little 
careful study into its purpose. It is not a revelation of 
future celestial matters, for it says the time is at hand. 



222 REVELATION. 

It commenced then, and has continued until the present 
time, all on the plane of material sense. 

John's history of the Church here does not differ from 
Paul's in its results, ouly in the form of its symbols ; nor 
from that of Christ and the prophets. There appears to 
have been a common understanding among them that a 
fraudulent Christian dispensation was to usurp the place 
of the true, and continue until the world became suf- 
ficiently enlightened to throw it off. 

Beginning with the first verse of the seventeenth chap- 
ter of Revelation, we get the relative character of the 
Church to Christ, in the figure of a lewd woman " sitting 
upon many waters [/.e. having the support of many dif- 
ferent classes of people] ; with whom the kings of the 
earth have committed fornication [i.e. a S3'stem of moral 
and political intercourse (cohabiting) has been carried on 
that has brought forth children (governments) illegitimate 
to Christ and to divine truth], and the inhabitants of the 
earth have been made drunk with the wine of her forni- 
cation [/.e. have drank in these false doctrines and 
unchristian governmental principles, until their morn I 
sense is stupefied to that extent they cannot distinguish 
between right and wrong : for right they put might and 
reconcile wrong by vicarious atonement]. 

" So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilder- 
ness [i.e. took him down through centuries of time, until 
he reached that wilderness condition when false doctrine 
had grown to fill all the earth with almost impenetrable 
shadow, obscuring the face of that great luminary, the 
truth, and producing the world's dark age] : 

'' And I saw a woman [a church or an ecclesiastical 
power] sit upon a scarlet colored beast [i.e. a church 



I 



REVELATION. 223 

supported by a civil power whose whole system was deep 
dyed in blood] full of uanies of blasphemy." Every 
name having a divine implication attached to such an 
institution as here described is blasphemy. The mouths 
of the popes were filled with blasphemous assumption. 
*'And the woman [Church] was arrayed in purple and 
scarlet color [emblems of blood], and decked with gold 
and precious stones and pearls." Witness the vestments 
of the officiating priesthood of the Church ; especiall}^ 
the cardinals, bishops, and popes, also the millionnaire 
priests. But in a nominal sense she holds in her posses- 
sion the jewelry of heaven, — such as the Golden Rule, 
beatitudes, nominal teachings of Christ, and others, but 
only uses them to decorate her outward appearance. They 
arc not to be found where they would practically work 
out the same material good to her neighbor as to her- 
self. '' Having a golden cup in her hand full of abomi- 
nations" (i.e. having the claim to divine authority, apos- 
tolic succession ; but she has filled this golden cup of 
privilege with the filth of her abominable dogmas and 
traditions as the result of her idolatrous intrigues). 

'' And upon her forehead was a name written. Mystery, 
Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abomina- 
tions of the Earth." '' Upon her forehead," designating 
her intellectual sphere, the seat of her dogmatic emana- 
tions. " A name mystery" : it seems superfluous to state 
here what everybody knows, that every church claiming 
the name of Christ is grounded in mystery ; and when 
questioned, the invariable answer is, it is a mystery not 
intended for us to understand ; and especially is this the 
case with the (mother) Catholic Church, who w^ould keep 
the Bible from the laity in order to hold the power to still 



224 REVELATION. 

more mystify and terrorize the people. ''Tlie Great": 
we all admit it to be a great body. ''The mother of 
harlots " : the Church of Rome is the mother of every 
church to-day bearing the name of Christ ; and eyery one of 
them are carrying on the same illicit intrigue with powers 
and principles opposed to Christ, bringing them into the 
same category of harlotry with the mother "Babylon," 
which means confusion, which is the essential state of 
the whole Christian dispensation from Pope Leo XIII. 
to Hallelujah Sal. "And abominations of the earth'*: 
if the pagan doctrines written in the forehead (intelli- 
gence) of this " paganized Christianity" — to wit, immac- 
ulate conception, yicarious atonement, trinity God, and 
eternal torment — are not abominations of the earth, then 
we fail to comprehend in what abomination consists. 
"And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the 
saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus " : here 
seems to be a distinction between two classes of martyrs, 
the saints and the martyrs of Jesus ; and there certainly 
were two classes of martyrs that would consistently come 
under these two heads : the martyrs that held the pure 
doctrines of Christ before those doctrines became pagan- 
ized, and were martyred by pagan Rome, constituting the 
saints in the mind of the revelator ; and the martyrs 
that were only dissenters, in some points of doctrine, 
from the paganized Christianity, and were martyred by 
papal Rome. Rome neyer swapped its Paganism for 
Christianity ; it only swapped names for a purpose. 
The same disposition, by the same class, from the same 
motives, that martyred the apostolic Christians by pagau 
Rome, martyred the so-called heretics by papal Rome. 
It has never made the slii2:htest difference whether 



REVELATION. 225 

Rome was pagan or papal ; it always manifested the 
same bitter spite to the true follower of Christ {i.e, 
to those that contrary to her admonitions have dared to 
differ from her assumption), and she has never let slip 
an opportunity to crush such a one to the full extent of 
her power. Witness all her martyred and persecuted vic- 
tims ; witness Dr. McGlynn and his followers. 

She issues her edict against the boycott ; then she en- 
forces it by setting her pagan example. She boycotts the 
man that boycotts. She boycotts his soul, refusing to 
raise his superstition out of purgator3\ She boycotts his 
grave, refuses him burial where her holy water has been 
sprinkled. She refuses burial to the little waif whose body 
has been forced to seek a premature grave in consequence 
of the unequal distribution wrought out by the greedy gov- 
ernmental system falsely called Christian. 

'' And the woman [Church] which thou sawest is that 
great [system] city, which reigneth over the kings of the 
earth." There is no possible chance of mistaking parties 
here in this text, for never has there but one church and 
one city and one system reigned over the kings of the 
earth. That church is the Church of Rome, that city is 
the city of Rome, and that ecclesiastical system is the 
Roman Catholic temporal power, which Cardinal Gibbons 
and the whole Roman Catholic Church are clamoring 
to have restored. Passing on to the eighteenth chapter, 
we read : '' And after these things [i.e. after seeing what 
was written in the seventeenth chapter concerning the 
harlotry, beastliness, and blood-thirstiness of the Church 
of Rome, locating her by the distinguished position she 
held from all others over the kings of the earth] I saw 
another angel come down from heaven, having great 



226 REVELATION. 

power ; and the earth was lightened with his glory." The 
term angel here, like all other figures in Revelation, is 
used only in a representative sense, symbolizing the influx 
of enlightenment through intellectual development suffi- 
cient to discover the fraudulent character of this colossal 
humbug. 

''And he cried mightih' with a strong voice, saying, 
Babylon the Great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the 
habitation of devils, and tlie hold of every foul spirit, and 
a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." This is both 
the literal and moral condition of the Church. Taken in 
a doctrinal sense, there are dogmas there, the principles 
of which are constituted in all that is known as acting- 
devils, the emanations of foul spirits, the incubations of 
unclean and hateful birds. Taken in a moral sense, there 
is the system of aristocracy as a ruling element in the 
Church : the least that can be said of it is that it is a hate- 
ful bird. There is a large' class that believe in slavery, and 
a larger class that make color a rule of religious associa- 
tion ; there is all the element of political intrigue massed 
in with the Church, and enrolled in its membership ; there 
is just the same system of deception, misrepresentation, 
and fraud in trade that there is outside of the Church : 
it is recognized and practised as a necessary expedient, 
and has come to be reckoned as a virtue of success ; and 
the successful merchant, not the honest one, is the party 
most welcome in the Church. 

And when it comes to individual representatives of 
these characters, they are all there ; men whose actions 
are prompted by all the incentives to selfish interests 
that this system of inequality presents, where the rich 
man's dollar is much larger than the poor man's : for 



REVELATION. 227 

example, because the poor man is forced to buy in small 
quantities, he is obliged to pay a much larger per cent, 
sometimes double, sometimes triple, and after submitting 
to heavy taxation by the government, his Christian neigh- 
bor has the right to levy any additional am'>unt upon all 
he consumes, simply by exercising the might, which he 
proceeds to do by combinations and trusts. The Church 
is full of these ''hateful birds," and they are welcomed to 
the '' hold." She holds out both hands to them. These 
are the fruits of an unchristian system. Her pretence 
to the name has not the least weight in truth. He that 
she calls Lord, Lord, never knew her ; and his orders 
to her are to depart. Her identity, as shown by the 
revelator, is conclusively established. How truly she 
darkened the sun of reason, that greatest luminary in the 
sphere of man, and turned the moon of intellectual light 
into blood, i.e. turned all her intellectual resources into 
the capacity of a human slaughter-house ! Indeed, the 
extremes of torture by the human butchers were actually 
reduced to a science dui'iug the period termed the Dark 
Ao'cs. 



228 THE TRIO. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE TRIO. 

The present Christian system is constituted in three 
grand divisions, termed by Revelation the dragon, the 
beast, and the false prophet, — typical names for pagan 
idolatry, the civil authority, and a bogus Christianity. 

Pagan Rome organized, authorized, promulgated, and 
disseminated the doctrines, dogmas, and rituals composing 
the present order of what she is pleased to call gospel 
(or good news), a message which bears in its folds the 
poison of asps, the bitterness of gall, the grief of broken 
hearts, the tyranny of oppression, the sting of wrath, the 
tortures of hell, and every form of evil known to man. 
This travest}' on Christ she claims is His true doctrine, 
thus building up a great iniquitous system in His name 
which constitutes the Antichrist ; i.e. the great opposer 
of Christ, or that which is against Christ, which would 
eventually annihilate the true Christ by the substitution of 
its own falsehoods. 

This is the false prophet (as opposed to the true). 
Everywhere that pagan Rome (the dragon) has been able 
to seat the false prophet (throughout Christendom) the 
civil government has become the support and protection 
of the duet and third party to the trinity, completing, 
the monstrosity so truthfully pictured by the revelator, 
who gives the true history of its rise, its character, its 



THE TRIO. 229 

dispensational limit, its eventual waning and final col- 
lapse, which bears out in its characteristics the most 
complete parallels to the prophetic description possible. 
While no other person or power can be found that has 
ever borne any likeness to them, — and we challenge both 
Catholics and Protestants to show wherein their antitype 
has ever appeared outside of themselves, — they cannot be 
placed in the future, for the revelator says, " Seal not the 
sayings of the prophecy of this book : for the time is at 
hand" (Rev. xxii. 10) ; i'.e. it began there to be fulfilled: 
also, Rev. i. 3 says the time is at hand. Paul says it 
began to work in his day ; that it was a dispensational 
career, and would be destroyed by the coming in of a 
brighter dispensation (2 Thess. ii. 3 to 12, inclusive). 

Christ foretold in the parable of the Wheat and Tares 
that it would begin immediately following his departure, 
and continue until the end of the dispensation ; and the 
prophet Daniel prophesied the same thing. If found at 
all, it must be located in this dispensation, and as the 
measure of the dispensation spanning the dispensation 
distinctively constituting the dispensational feature. It 
cannot be applied to ancient Rome, for that did not begin 
in the apostle's day. It was nearing its end then. Neither 
did it fill any of the specifications to any degree commen- 
surate with the magnitude of the predictions. 

Mohammedanism does not answer the description. It 
did not begin in the apostle's day, did not usurp God's 
place, never called itself God's vicar, did not wear out 
the saints, did not think to change times and laws, and 
answers to none of those figures in the Apocalypse, 
describing Church and State. 

Christianity is the only system that has had power over 



230 THE TKIO. 

all kindreds and tongues and nations (Rev. xiii. 7). It 
is the only power that has gone forth to the kings of the 
earth and the whole world, and gathered them (Rev. xvi. 
14). In short, it is the power, and the only power, that 
answers to the language (in colossal figures) throughout 
the entire list of its descriptions, the Book of Revelation. 
It is her photograph, which no one who is acquainted with 
her can look upon without recognizing the likeness. Her 
work has been essentially a work of doctrinal intrigue. 
There is no such judicial relation of a man to the world 
as she has promulgated of Christ. It is a blasphemous 
shift, ingeniously engineered to shirk responsibility. It 
is the father of indulgences. Its effect is to annul virtue. 
It displaces actual principles, and opens the flood-gates 
of free license to the whole mass of evil disposition. 
Nearly two thousand years of its working has filled the 
world with drunkards, harlots, criminals, paupers, tramps, 
tyrants, oppressors, monopolists, and the spirit of aggres- 
sive war, rebellion, strife, and every evil purpose ; and 
all these workers of iniquity expect to be redeemed by 
vicarious atonement, and to have the act of righteousness 
imputed to them. 

Instead of accomplishing a work of righteousness, and 
inaugurating a system that works justice and equity to all, 
it has thwarted all such purposes, and destroyed the only 
potent principle that could accomplish such a work, which 
is personal righteousness, the onW noble characteristic 
that distinguishes a man from a brute, and couples the 
divine with the human being. The whole trouble with 
our chaotic time is our religion. Correct that, and all is 
correct. The idolatry of Christianity is no better than 
the idolatry of Confucius, Buddha, Krishna, or any other 



THE TRIO. 231 

Pagan, as the result of its systematic workiug shows. If 
we are really superior iu intelligence, we owe it to intel- 
lectual development, and not to our peculiar form of 
idolatry. 

In the words of Paul we say, "- Thou that abhorrest 
idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?" i.e, is our immaculate 
conception, prox}^ justice, trinity God, eternal torment, 
salvation by blood, by water, by the Eucharist, by mass, 
by baptism, by counting beads, or saying prayers, and 
all the train of judicial acts, that make us think we see 
things we don't see and change to conditions that we do 
not change to, less abhorrent to God than the sacrilege of 
other idolaters ? 

"Thou that preachest, a m.an should not steal, dost 
thou steal?" i.e. is your system, that you call Christian, 
one of legal injustice, working wrong, hardship, and mis- 
ery to a large class, one whose subtle working, through 
its intricate machinery, robs the poor to increase the 
rich? 

" Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, 
dost thou commit adultery?" i.e. is your Christian system 
continually holding illicit alliances with other characteristics 
than those of Christ, such as wealth, power, aristocracy, 
and all those enemies of Christ, that act like demons but 
profess to be Christ's? 

" Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through break- 
ing the law ; dishonorest thou God?" i.e. is your Christian 
system so constructed that it presents every incentive to 
evil as its most prominent working motive principle? Is 
your Christian system constructed on such a basis that you 
can keep strictly within the limits of legality, while you vir- 
tually rob, steal, plunder, murder, and violate every moral 



232 THE TKIO. 

principle of the divine law? Do you rob the poor by the 
process of your law, while you imprison him for robbing 
you in \ilolation of that law ? Do you make a distinction 
between robbing by the law and robbing without law? 
Does your Christian system work disadvantage to the 
poor ? Does it virtually render the purchasing power of 
his dollar from one-third to one-half less than that of the 
rich man? Does your Christian system enable the rich 
man to force the poor man to buy in the highest market 
and sell in the lowest, while he himself buys in the lowest 
and sells in the highest? Does it allow the rich to create 
scarcity, limit production, control resources, monopolize 
the benefits of productive agencies, force up the market 
to the highest possible figure, while it forces labor down 
and degrades the laborer to a condition no better than 
that of chattel slavery ? Does it allow the rich to impose 
tax, tariff, profit, and interest upon the poor man's neces- 
saries of life, until these usuries equal or exceed the value 
of the article of commerce ? 

Thou that makest thy boast of the human law through 
breaking the divine law, dishonorest thou God? Does the 
Church hierarchy and the aristocratic controlling element 
in it expect to settle all this fraud with their whimpering 
prayers about Jesus, and the distribution of a few feeble 
charities and proxy redemption? Do the}' really believe 
they are fooling God with this trick? Do they think it 
any easier for a rich man to enter the kingdom now 
than it was eighteen hundred years ago ? Do they really 
think they are going into the kingdom before these har- 
lots, drunkards, tramps, and criminals they are annually 
creating by the working of their boasted Christian sys- 
tem? " For the name of God is blasphemed among the 



THE TRIO. 233 

Gentiles, through you, as it is written '' (Rom. ii. 21, 22, 
23, 24). 

That Cln'istendom is a perfect fulfilment of this text is 
corroborated by an article written by Won Chin Foo in 
the August number of the North American Review of 
1887, entitled, "Why am I a heathen?" an argument that 
no Christian has been able to refute. In this article he 
states that, " among four hundred million Chinamen, there 
are fewer murders and robberies, suicides and heart-break- 
ings, than in the State of New York " ; "that there is more 
wickedness in the neighborhood of a single church district 
of one thousand people in New York than there is among 
one million heathen " ; and several other comparisons in 
Avhich he shows Christianity in a very unfavorable light. 

And thus it is that Christendom seems to think that, by 
performing a few judicial acts to secure their personal sal- 
vation, they may unite in a collective body, where no 
individual seems responsible, and carry on a system of 
national and international injustice that surpasses the 
wickedness of heathendom. 

By no law but the law of vicariousness can such a 
Christless system be called Christian. The order that 
would pass itself off for Christian must at least be able to 
make a better moral showing than Paganism. It must be 
able to show that the character of its master is the motive 
of its action and its excuse for existing, and to show a 
moral superiority above all other religions. Its intellec- 
tual precedence counts for nothing in corroboration of 
Christianity, when that intelligence is exhausted, largely 
working mischief, which is actually the case with Christen- 
dom. She boasts that brains cost money, hard study, 
a close application, and great sacrifice, for a most desir- 



234 



THE TRIO. 



able condition of culture. So far, so true. But, as the 
culture enables her to play upon society, so as to gobble 
all that is good, she claims the right to do it. Brains are 
the fittest ; therefore brains should have it all ; therefore 
all the brains that are seeking culture look upon labor as 
degrading ; consequently they must seek new fields, create 
new systems, with manifold official requirements, for these 
lazy flats and sharps to aspire to, where, by playing upon 
the hopes and fears of credulous multitudes, the}' make the 
world think they are essential to its existence, while, by 
their withdrawal from the industrial world to be supported 
out of its resources, they add nothing to those resources, 
but add another force to that of limiting production, cre- 
ating scarcity, and playing into the hands of monopolists 
and t3Tants, — like the body of a kite, of which these 
essential brains are the tail. 

The world's most gigantic scheme of this character is 
the Christian system, with its costh' churches of countless 
millions ; its corpulent priesthood, with fat salaries ; and 
its system of finance draining upon the w^orld's resources, 
squandering its productions upon cultured loafers, creating 
inequality, poverty, and universal distress, dissatisfaction, 
and a predisposition to retributive violence as the legiti- 
mate fruits of brain fraud. 

Dissolve this system at once ; return the millions of its 
unproductive brains to the fields of productive resources, 
and leave the billions of treasure they draw from the 
people where it belongs. 

Take our inexplicable system of tanglefoot technicali- 
ties and ancient precedences we term law, and cremate 
them, and then make a few necessary laws covering all 
cardinal points of the Decalogue ; write them so simple 



THE TRIO. 2S5 

that any ordinaiy child ten years old can understand them ; 
place them in some public location, where all can read 
them ; return ninety-nine of every hundred lawyers to the 
sources of production ; crush out the liquor traffic, and 
return that class of brains to production ; return nine 
merchants out of every ten ; give the women an equal 
chance with the men in all things, especially in productive 
lines ; then reward invention, throw open the earth's pro- 
ductive resources to the full benefit of the productive 
capacity of the people ; reduce the hours of labor to four, 
and require that amount of every well person between 
certain ages ; and teach every child that grows to under- 
stand that physical labor is the only real honorable thing 
in the world, for out of it are the issues of life ; banish 
all parties seeking to monopolize or control any of God's 
bounties to a lunatic asylum for life. 

The other twenty hours out of the twenty-four would 
give ample time for education to all, recreation, and other 
necessities. Priestcraft, if it means business, would have 
ample time to instruct itself in reference to the truth ; 
would be independent of dogmatic creeds and arbitrary 
hierarchies, and could preach the true gospel without 
money and without price ; then the little manual labor 
performed would become a pleasure, life become a para- 
dise ; poverty, orthodoxy, aristocracy, and other hypocri- 
sies would glide into the things that are past, and we be 
in a condition to advance on to the kingdom of God. 

Every system will bring forth whatever fruit is induced 
by the incentive in the system ; those incentives are the 
germs of production, and find their soil in the human 
heart. If anyone thinks to develop this present Christian 
system, whose every incentive is a temptation to evil, into 



236 THE TKIO. 

the kingdom of God, he is fatally mistaken. Before that 
thing can possibly obtain by the process of any law known 
to cause and effect, a system must arise whose principles 
contain the incentives to act in the virtues of those condi- 
tions that produce virtue. ''Do men gather grapes of 
thorns, or figs of thistles?" (Matt. vii. 16). Never 1 You 
can no more sow one kind of mental seed and reap oppo- 
site principles from what you induce by the seed sown 
than you can of literal fruit. The dissolution of this 
system is what Peter called the dissolving of the elements, 
and Christ called the end of the age, and Paul called the 
revealing of the man (system) of sin, and Revelation calls 
the fall of Babylon. 

It is the dissolving partnerships of the great Antichris- 
tian trust of the firm of the dragon, the beast, and the 
false prophet, — the world's most interesting trio. 



KECAPITULATION. 237 



CHAPTER XX. 

RECAPITULATION. 

To think that mere existence is life is to lay the foun- 
dation of error. He who learns by repeating from others, 
without investigation, is as good as a parrot, bat not as 
wise as a monkey. To sail the voyage of life upon the 
bark of falsehood is like sailing down the harbor in a 
sound sleep. 

Christ said, " I am come that the}' might have life, and 
that they might have it more abundantly," implying that 
His doctrines laid the foundations for true thought (which 
is life), and to live in the ever-expanduig development of 
original thinking which truth onlv can awaken and foster, 
giving an abundance to life that cannot be liad by taking 
thought second-handed, without applying the rule which 
the Divine Architect has placed in the constitution of 
every one of us (namely, reason) to determine whether the 
line is plumb or crooked. 

Whoever lives his threescore and ten 3'ears, and does 
not learn that a concrete body, a whole nation, or the 
whole human race are just as liable to be in mortal error 
as an individual concerning civil, political, social, indus- 
trial, and universal economy and theological doctrines, 
speaks very poorly for his observation of the relative 
condition of things. 

It has been demonstrated that because the whole race 



238 KECAPITULATION. 

believed the world was flat was no reason that it was so, 
or because they believed it stood still, while the other 
planets passed around it, did not make it so. 

It has also been demonstrated that because 700,000,000 
Pagans believe a thing does not make it true. Tlie same 
with 150,000,000 Mohammedans ; the same with 200,000,- 
000 Catholics ; and the same with 100,000,000 Protestants. 
It has also been demonstrated that, contemporary with 
the glaring errors of all these grand divisions of humanity, 
private individuals have held the truth in opposition to the 
mass {i.e. private opinion against public opinion) ; and 
every reformation since the creation Jias come about by 
private opinion bolting from public opinion. Examples : 
Abraham, Jesus Christ, Martin Luther, Socrates, Galileo, 
and thousands of others who have penetrated the truth, 
and dared to stand up against the big-mouthed public 
opinion of their day, and declare the truth in the face of 
the popular humbug. Idolatry laughed at Abraham, the 
Jews laughed at Christ, the public laughed at Socrates, the 
Roman Catholic Church laughed at Galileo and at Martin 
Luther ; but it is said, ''He laughs best who laughs last." 
Who of these parties are laughing to-day ? With immortal 
irony, the men that dared to take issue with public opinion, 
these private individuals, were the cranks of their time ; 
they were maligned, misrepresented, and purposely mis- 
understood by those that preferred popularity to singu- 
larity. Who are being laughed at to-day by the same 
booby of public opinion, who, with all his past expe- 
rience of ages of failure, has learned nothing? 

It is the men that are taking issue with the public opin- 
ion of Christendom that dare to say to it that it is a bio- 
ecclesiastical swindle, a libel on God's character, a traducer 



RECAPITULATION. 239 

and slanderer of the divine attributes, a blasphemer and 
sacrilegious institution, and stands convicted by the wit- 
ness of universal history, of the violation of every law in 
the Decalogue. It bears no relation to Him it falsely 
claims as its Author. It is the spiritual half of the In- 
quisition, and bears all the roots of mental torture that 
the literal half did of physical. The literal Inquisition 
was a legitimate outgrowth of its doctrines. ''By their 
fruits ye shall know them." It would bear the same wild 
grapes again if it had the opportunity. 

Christ made a man's disposition towards the poor the 
hydrometer test of his salvation ; and yet we see Eng- 
land so Christian that she contests the seat of an infidel 
in Parliament for years, coolly legislating Ireland to a 
condition of actual starvation. England represents the 
head of the Protestant Christian world. The members of 
her Parlir.ment with their queen represent that head. All 
Christendom acknowledges their Christianity, and ap- 
plauds their Christian queen, thus proving that the Chris- 
tian system (so-cnlled) is Christian only in name ; that 
its Antichristian character does not invalidate its title to 
the name : its vicarious righteousness takes care of that, 
as actual righteousness is not demanded or expected. 
This is the blasphemous principle of Antichristian indul- 
gence, peddled out at convenience, in order to practise 
every wrong at will, and still be Christian. 

What would be thought of the old hag that would 
butcher, burn, and torture her children for presuming to 
have a thought differing from their mother, who had 
committed every crime known to the law, and justified 
herself on the plea of expediency? Who would think of 
committing to such a one (even after condoning her sin) 



240 RECAPITULATION. 

the keeping of their lives ? Who would trust such an incom- 
petent with the treasures of all they hold dear, and take 
her counsels for the rule and guide of their lives ? Such 
a freak of the law of fitness is inexplicable as well as in- 
excusable. The criminal history of the Church annuls 
all obligations, if there ever had been any, and exempts 
every son of man from all claims to her service or asso- 
ciation. 

When we consider the amount of sin and blasphemy 
she has committed, of which lying forms a large part, it 
annuls the penalty, and stamps as a fraud the story of 
Ananias and Sapphira. 

The abortive efforts of the Church to unite her denomi- 
national factions proves her Antichristian character. 

Catholics and Protestants cannot unite ; neither can 
Protestant denominations unite with each other. The only 
oneness they can claim is one of a thousand. 

Paul said, the " antichrist," '' man of sin," " son of per- 
dition," had commenced to work in his dsiy ; that it was to 
continue until Christ came. There is no institution now 
in existence but the Church that started in Paul's day. 
Therefore the Church must father the Antichristian mon- 
strosit}', or count Paul a failure as a prophet. 

The Scriptures do not teach an unbroken line of suc- 
cessive Christianity from the time of the apostles to the 
coming of Christ, but the reverse. They teach that the 
line was to be broken immediately following their depart- 
ure, and remain broken until His coming. The purpose 
of the coming is to restore that broken line. There would 
be no occasion for His coming if His administration had 
continued on in an unbroken connection. That continual 
presence would preclude the possibility of another advent 



RECAPITULATION. 241 

in any sense ; and all language addressed to such an 
event would be frivolous and abortive, for no event or 
condition could respond to it. 

It cannot be said of persons already present, that they 
are coming. Unless Christ went away in the sense that 
His doctrines were lost or degraded, He could not come or 
return in the sense of restoring them, or of destroying 
false doctrines. These would be apostolic successors are 
a gratuitous assumption of no relative value whatever to 
Christianity. If God needs apostolic successors. He can 
just as easily raise them up from the pavements of Chi- 
cago as he could raise up children to Abraham from the 
cobble-stones of Jerusalem; i.e, God could communicate 
His principles through the intelligence of Christ's time as 
well as He could that of Abraham's ; and He can just 
as easily open up His mind to the intelligence of the 
nineteenth century as He could to that of the first, and 
better ; for it is better developed, and in a more recep- 
tive condition. And the coming man will no more take 
counsel with the boasted apostolic successors than the suc- 
cessors take counsel of the boasted children of Abraham 
to-day. 

The true Christian system will not be one that our 
spiritual interests will be involved in commercial pressure. 
God is not a hypocrite, that He should offer a free salva- 
tion to the world, and then make it a commercial system 
so burdensome that a large class are obliged to forego 
it from financial considerations. 

The present system has built a fire spanning eternity in 
the path of man ; and by its iniquitous system of com- 
mercial exchange has built another one, in his rear, span- 
ning time, and driving him pellmell into the orthodox fire 
of endless ages. This it calls good news. 



242 REC A PIT UL ATION. 

Christendom is not more ready to receive and put into 
practice those teachings of Christ, which would carry the 
world ont of its present course of administration, than 
the Jews were in the days of the personal Christ ; and he 
who advocates tliem as anything but a sentiment will 
fare no better in the spirit of his treatment from the 
Church than did the apostles from the Jews. 

He went into their temple and taught, speaking of new 
and radical reforms in governing principles, necessitating 
violent shocks (''I came not to bring peace, butasword"), 
in reorganizing governments upon new and untried princi- 
ples, reversing all known orders, "putting awa}^ old 
things, and making all things new." So radically differ- 
ent were His teachings of love and equality, and of the 
divine purpose to bring about a condition administering 
the full fruition of the divine beneficiaries to all mankind 
alike, — which He called the kingdom of God, kingdom of 
heaven, kingdom of the Father, kingdom of the Son, 
kingdom of Christ, all meaning one thing ; to wit, simply 
a condition where governments are rendered upon divine 
principles with the human grab and greed left out, — that 
the common people said, '' Never man spake like this man." 
It was not so much the manner in which He spoke as the 
novelt}^ of His doctrines, and the fascination they had 
for a common class who were strangers to the conditions 
set forth in His teachings ; and for these reasons, the 
" common people heard him gladly." It was gospel 
(good news) to them, that they were to have a share of 
the inheritance in those things which they themselves 
create by their labor. 

God has intrusted to man excellent and divine quali- 
ties, which can never be realized from or developed under 



RECAPITULATION. 243 

the present order, such as love, benevolence, and an 
unreserved good will to all : the good qnalities in man's 
nature are dwarfed now, while the meanest elements are 
developed to the highest prominence. The demoralizing 
influences of anti-divine principles pervade and contami- 
nate all societ}', and defile all orders, and are the frnits 
of principles grounded in demonology. What is called 
charity is only conscience returning a pittance of the 
boodle it has wrenched from the poor ; when, if full 
restitution was made, charity and the poor might swap 
places. God had no use for charity, and He did not pro- 
vide for such a disposition, and man cannot create the con- 
dition in harmony with truth. The word is a misnomer ; 
Christ never used it ; neither is it in the Bible except by 
a false translation. There are only two conditions under 
which we can do for another : one is duty ; the other is love. 

God's principle of love cannot be hoodwinked by man's 
policy of charity. Humanity has got to "become just 
before it can begin to be generous " ; and when they be- 
come just, the occasion for charity will have disappeared, 
and generosity will emanate from pure love. 

The way people justify the wicked intrigues of the 
government is by taking their standard from the govern- 
ment or the laws of men, and not from the moral law. 
The government as it stands now has successfully re- 
duced production to the limitations of commercial con- 
trol for the convenience of speculation, while labor 
piteously begs for the privilege to live. 

Land is the divine inheritance of labor. How came it 
in the hands of loafers ? Certainly not by righteous ad- 
ministration. The product of land, to its full unrestricted 
abundance, is the divine inheritance of the masses. How 



244 RECAPITULATIO:Nr. 

came it in the hands of monopolists, limited to the con- 
trol of speculation ? How comes it tliat monopolists are 
controlling all that divine goodness and love, by its 
abundant provision, has intrusted to man? It simply 
amounts to indirect robbery. The government presents 
to a man a yearly tax bill of ten dollars ; the man looks 
at the bill, and protests against paying such a heavy tax. 

This is direct taxation. But government puts a tax on 
sugar, tea, coffee, and all the necessaries of life, which 
amounts to ninety dollars per year to the man ; but as he 
never sees the bill of it, he never thinks of it : this is 
indirect taxation. 

Three men — Labor, Law, and Gospel — settle in a new 
country : Labor gives Law one-third of his produce, to tell 
him how to quarrel; and Gospel one-third, to tell him he 
will probably be dammed ; and he has one-third left. But 
Law and Gospel are not entirely satisfied with this distri- 
bution ; but as a direct taxation, it is all Labor will stand ; 
so they arrange a system of exchange called money. 
Then Labor buys Law and Gospel for cash at high rates, 
because the}^ represent Brains, which leaves Labor noth- 
ing ; then Brains buys his products for a pittance, and 
raises the price on them, and holds it until he makes 
Labor pay all he has for a bare subsistence. This is 
Capital Culture, and Labor, all trying to teach Labor 
economy ; but the more he economizes, the poorer he 
gets. This is the principle of the great Christian com- 
mercial system termed in Matt. xxi. 13, a den of thieves 
(Old Version) ; the New Version sa3's, den of robbers. 
Its working principles and those of a den of thieves or. 
robbers differs not in kind. All these things are the 
legitimate workings of the Antichristian, and not of the 
true Christian order. 



RECAPITULATION. 245 

The doctrine that man cannot do right is a delusive 
humbug, and is the great barrier to the development of 
the divine character in man, and the thought is destined to 
be removed to make room for progressive action. What- 
ever righteousness a man does, is as meritorious and ac- 
ceptable as though Gabriel did it. 

The only purpose of sacrifice is to destroy that condition 
that necessitates sacrifice. 

Eternal life is not a thing of favor doled out for a con- 
sideration, but is a fixture in the eternal law of evolution. 

The hope of eternal life rests in the law of evidences, 
which is that all things gravitate to a standard equivalent 
to the purpose indicated in the plant. What would a 
rose-bush be, if it did not develop the rose? or an apple- 
tree, if it stopped short of the apple? Neither would be 
worth the planting. What would a dog or horse be, with- 
out animal intelligence? Man goes beyond both, and has 
spiritual intelligence. He is Jbhe only earthly being that 
takes cognizance of God, sees Him, takes hold of Him, 
talks with Him, and appreciates and aspires to His eternal 
conditions. These are the purposes indicated in the sensa- 
tions of his embryo life in the womb of time. What is 
the purpose in him, if he falls short of this? Nothing. 
He is the only purposeless being in creation. To fall 
short at this point proves all creation a failure. The rose 
and the man that saw its beauty and knew its fragrance 
are both no better than before they existed. Nothing has 
been accomplished but a cruel mockery. Has the law 
that never failed, in all lower orders, to produce the fruit 
indicated in the tree, to paint the flower designed in the 
bud, and to fulfil the purpose for use apparent in the dog 
and horse (who with all their intelligence have mercifully 



246 RECAPITULATION. 

been kept from the sight of eternal life) , miserably failed 
at this point? Are the new-fledged cherubs of promise, 
expectation, hope, and anticipation to be strangled at 
birth ? Are the culminating indications in the plant of all 
created things to blight in the bud? Will this rose never 
flower? Has the combined power of creation spent its 
forces leading man up to the mountain-top, realizing to 
his intelligence the possibilities of the boundless realm 
beyond ; penetrated his soul, opening up an artesian well 
of responsive appreciation, and a sharpness of desire that 
renders life a failure and a mockery without it, simply 
to fail? Is this conception of immortalit}' to miscarry or 
perish in the womb? If so, it changes the whole aspect 
of life from that of love and beneficence to a thing of 
cruel tantalization. 

In the law regulating sections to combinations, or of 
parts relative to a whole ; in the law of the lower relative 
to the higher ; in the law of design and accomplishment, or 
law fulfilled where all parts have been successively coupled 
on to an unbroken chain, — and there still remains a surplus 
link pointing forward to still another coupling, indicating 
that the completion is yet future, — lies the divine prom- 
ise ; and as the promise indicated in the coupling of the 
parts proved infallible, so also will the great promise indi- 
cated in the coupling of the mortal on to immortality. 

Starting, as it were, from the mollusk, and grading up 
the animal kingdom until it reaches the mountain-top 
of human intelligence (taking care that none shall catch a 
glimpse of future life below the line of humanity) , stand- 
ing there upon the mountain-top, looking out upon a 
boundless realm beyond, — 



RECAPITULATION. 247 

Where festering flesh is left ])ehiiKl, 
And jself-inccntives out of mind, 
And memory dear of all that's sought 
Has given place to present thought, 
And every fear and every ill 
Is left behind the boundary hill, 
While all around is fair and sweet, 
Inviting all to come and eat, — 

is a fair inference that the grand invitation from the 
Father to the Son to come up and view the Father's kingly 
estate is equivalent to a guarantee deed of heirship to this 
royal inheritance. 

There is a law of evidences laid in everything in the 
universe; otherwise, the astronomers, philosophers, and 
men of science could ariive at no facts in their researches 
for truth, and none of them that are honest assume to go 
beyond the evidences. But the nature of the evidences 
must necessarily differ according to the different elements 
investigated. We cannot discover the presence of malaria 
with the same class of evidences that we would a material 
being ; neither can we apply the same rules alike to astron- 
omy and geology, or to geology and metaphysics. 

God gives no broken systems ; the universal law of 
evidences is nowhere broken off or omitted. The appar- 
ent purpose is that we ma}' ''prove all things" in order 
to ''hold fast that which is good," so that beyond the 
boundary line of deductive evidences we cannot go ; hence 
no eternal destiny beyond that boundary could be involved 
in any conditions this side of it. TV^hat, then, are the 
evidences connecting our moral offences, which we en 11 
sins, with a future eternal retribution? We defy any one 
to discover any such evidences, or the evidences of any 



248 KECAPITULATION. 

retribution, that cannot be reversed or annulled in the 
future as well as in the present. If God forgives sins at 
all, it is because they rest upon the platform of non-inter- 
ference beyond the natural law laid in every constitution 
of cause and result. When we do wrong, the result hurts 
us ; but when we reverse that action, we get the result of 
the reverse. He does not behold iniquity in Jacob, or 
perverseness in Israel (Num. xxiii. 21). Why not? Is 
it because there is not iniquity and perverseness there? 

Let us see. In Dent, xxxii. 5 we read of Israel that 
it is '^perverse and crooked.'' Also in Matt. xvii. 17 
they are called '^ faithless and perverse." Jer. xxiii. 36 
and iii. 21 say ^'they perverted the words of the living 
God." Is. i. 4-13 calls them ^' a people laden with ini- 
quit}"" ; and yet God says he has " seen neither iniquity or 
perverseness in them," and this after all the accounts of 
their perverse and iniquitous actions during forty years in 
the wilderness. 

There is another line in the law of evidences which 
makes a strong connecting link between man and immor- 
tality. The constituents of all created things are in the 
universe no more nor less whether the things are created 
or not; ^.e. there is just as much matter in the universe 
before and after a man is born into the world : matter has 
neither increased nor decreased, but has changed form, or 
rather taken form. Now it would be absurd for that law 
of universality to cease at the limitation of matter, when 
matter is the smallest factor in the constitution of man. 
The intellectual or divine part of man is the essential or 
real man ; but this part, though subtle in its discovery to 
the senses on account of its invisible character, is none 
the less a universal element, and is neither increased nor 



RECAPITULATION. 249 

decreased by the existence of a man, but, like the other 
part, has taken on form, or rather individuality. It has 
individualized intelligence, and has been enabled to connect 
the I Am to this nucleus of being, and realize in it an 
ideal being, of which the I Am, although the great whole, 
is the realizing factor which produces the sense of person- 
ality, so that with man's limited intelligence he realizes 
the I Am of being. If it were possible for one to con- 
sume all intelligence in his being, he would become the 
I Am instead of an I Am, or a molecule of the great 
I Am, just the same as if one could consume all matter in 
the formation of a single body, he would be the sum of 
matter instead of the microbe : in either case now he is 
part of the whole, although separated into an interatomic 
unit and sensitized with personal consciousness. Now 
the same law of evidences that connects the material part 
with dissolution, or transportation to new forms of a lower 
order, should connect the intelligent part with life or trans- 
portation to new conditions of a higher order ; both parts 
return to their normal condition or natural element, with 
only the exception that as each part has been personified 
and given the quality of form and a definite identity, 
while the perishable or corruptible part passes through its 
process of chemical or physical decomposition, the living 
or imperishable part, as it resumes its former state, neces- 
sarily retains its new quality of personal identity by virtue 
of its intellectual character, although it is still an insep- 
arable part from the great universal intelligence, and thus 
the finite couples on to the infinite or immortal. As the 
ocean tide sweeps back the personal dewdrop into its own 
bosom, or the phosphorescent bubble appears on the sur- 
face in mid-ocean, glides along apace, and then resumes its 



250 RECAPITULATION. 

former relation, so do we, with this cliff ereDce, that they 
are the symbol, while we are the reality or the element of 
intellectual being. 

These things are among some of the evidences of the 
immortality of man, and these evidences are corroborated 
b}^ the evidences of the existence of Deity. Of course, 
without a Deity or an immortal Head, there is no hope for 
the immortal state of anything but vacancy. 

" Canst thou b}^ searching find out God?" Answering 
the question, we should say no, because of the limitless 
character of His being ; but we certainly can find out about 
Him whether He really exists, and what are the general 
characteristics of His relations to ourselves. All sceptics 
agree that there can be no effect without a cause ; even 
those that profess to disbelieve in a God agree to this. 
We exactly agree with them, and go a step farther, and 
say there can be no cause for an effect without a purpose ; 
and we go another step, and say there can be no purpose 
without design ; and still one more step, and say there 
can be no design without a designer, with an intelligent 
capacity equivalent to the result of that which is accom- 
pUshed. This is the universal law that couples cause to 
effect. We go down into one strata of the earth, and 
bring up certain iron implements, and pronounce them 
the implements of the Iron Age, and we are forced to 
place behind those relics a crude being to account for 
their existence. We go down again, and bring up stone 
implements, and we place behind them a still more crude 
being. Why? Because there is sufficient intelligence of 
design and purpose manifest in their construction to force 
us all to this conclusion. Again, we enter a wild forest 
where man has never before penetrated, and there dis- 



RECAPITULATION. 251 

cover a dam built across a brook or river. We see an 
effect, a cause, a design, but no designer : do we conclude 
there is none? By no means. We search and investigate 
until we decide that it is the work of that intelligent 
little creature, the beaver. Having discovered this law^, 
let us turn now to the perfection of complications in 
nature and the creation, bearing this thing in mind, that 
in all our efforts to construct, we have to contend con- 
stantly with the forces that tend to disarrangement, 
simply for the want of a higher knowledge of the exact 
condition of things ; and we are compelled to overcome 
these forces before we can proceed with our work ; and 
we overcome them only by gaining the knowledge of the 
exact conditions of their arrangement. 

Whence, then, this incomprehensible arrangement in 
opposition to all the numberless forces of disarrangement? 
Whence this conformity to all the conditional require- 
ments of a relentless, exacting, exact knowledge of the 
nature, quantity, quality, harmony, conditions, propor- 
tions, regulations, modulations, strength, power, adapta- 
tions, application, diversity, union, polar extremes ; many 
designs, tending to one purpose ; many causes, producing 
one result, — all to the finite mind, subtle, complicated, 
incomprehensibly complete, perfect? Amidst all the 
forces that tend to disarrangement, what force holds all 
these to the exact conditions of arrangement, — to the 
exact line of the rigid demands of knowledge? What 
arrangement regulates the outline of form to the line of 
beauty ? Cause is only the agent that couples purpose to 
result ; cause can by no means be independent. Purpose 
has stamped its name upon every created thing, like the 
name of the artist upon his picture. AVhose purpose is it? 



252 RECAPITULATION. 

Who purposed the body of man, adapting the parts to a 
whole, — to one central purpose, the head? What force 
arranged the feet to walk, the hands to handle, eyes to 
see, nose to smell, ears to hear, mouth to articulate, teeth 
to chew, tongue to taste, nerves to feel, joints to bend, — 
all filling various purposes to accomplish one single pur- 
pose? What force stopped the head at five feet six, or 
six feet, instead of twenty or fifty ? 

No vacuum can stand substitute for the designer. Any- 
thing can exist without feet, but not without a head. 
Law implies the lawyer ; law affirms the lawjer. The 
absence of intention cannot produce the results of inten- 
tion. The doctrine of evolution, or of natural selection, 
does not dispose of the Deity. The fact that all repro- 
duction is regulated to the dual force of the sexes proves 
there never was a time when it was otherwise. What- 
ever has been the form of evolution, the dual creation 
has had to come along hand in hand. There was no egg 
before the hen, and an egg before the rooster would have 
been non-incubative. The first egg that hatched was laid 
by a hen and sired by a rooster, or else there is no truth 
in natural law. 

We lay great stress upon visible evidences, and talk 
about them as real ; but if we had no constituent forces 
but those we call visible, we should not exist. I believe 
this world comes the nearest to being invisible of any we 
shall ever see. In fact, there is the merest speck of it 
that is visible at any one time, and that depends upon 
two little retinas, a little larger than a common bird-shot, 
and those not more than half in focus. I believe that in 
the visible sphere opaque bodies are no barrier to the 
vision. There is a sense in which we see invisibly here, 
but that is only symbolic. 



RECAPITULATION. 253 

The artist sees in the art realm what others cannot see 
until he draws the line of separation between his vision 
and the rest of the universe. This is a kind of symbol 
of what I understand of a visible world : that world will 
supply its own conditions of vision and will be complete, 
while vision here is only fractional. 

The vegetables upon which we subsist this year were 
invisible last year, and will be next ; while those we shall 
have next year are invisible now. AVe draw all our 
rations out of the invisible world. What is the purpose 
of this produce from the invisible world? It seems to 
be to centralize food for man. What is the object in 
man? It seems to be to centralize forces for a higher 
sphere. The vegetable kingdom seems to fulfil the pur- 
pose intended in them, — why should the man fail to 
answer the purpose implied in him? Instead of there 
being no God, it is all God. There is nothing else but 
God. All things are the manifestation of Deity. As 
Paul says, " God is all and in all." 

For further evidences of Deity, take the chick as a 
representative of the creation. What has regulated its 
conditions to the power of creative or generative possi- 
bilities, when those possibilities depend upon the harmo- 
nious operation of so many and such varied principles of 
phj'sical, mechanical, and instinctive laws, when the 
deviation from any of them would prove fatal? What 
force has ordered all these several constituents of the 
chicken to exactly conform to all the varied exactions of 
creative or generative laws, all of which are limited to 
exact conditions? To what kind of force did it occur, 
that the germ, or life-matter, after being compounded to 
the exact conditions of incubating rules, must be cradled 



254 EECAPITULATION. 

in a bed of consistent jelly, as a protection against ad- 
hesion to all foreign substance? What force conceived 
the necessity of soft down for its first clothing to its 
tender flesh? 

What kind of force fixed maternal affection as a neces- 
sary agent in the raising of the chick? and how did that 
force think to discharge that agent when the chick came 
to be sufficient unto itself? 

But change the chick now to child. What considera- 
tion provided neither feathers nor fur for tliat sensitive 
little body, a thousand times more precious than the 
chick? How did tliat creative force come to know that 
the child would be provided for by a pair of loving, 
capable parents? What force is it that is so minutely 
tempered with the faculty of reason, and so well ac- 
quainted with the varied requirements of generative con- 
ditions, as to be able to exactly conform to them? What 
force designed that child? What force prevented mal- 
formation in the arrangement of parts? What force 
employed a higher type of reason than any known to man 
in arranging its constitutional organs ? What force regu- 
lated its different stages of development to the necessity 
of the case, and then withdrew as the necessity ceased? 
But change the figure again from the child to the human 
race. What is the purpose indicated in this gigantic 
plant? If the Deity had purposed to develop a set of 
boobies instead of divinely qualified men, He would un- 
doubtedly have had a very different order of things from 
the present. He would probably have had that very 
comfortable state of things that many conceive would be. 
the only evidence of a designing Omnipotence, great, lov- 
ing First Cause, and all-directing Providence. But such 



RECAPITULATION. 255 

reasoning is the sqneal of the booby. In the very fact of 
the tenderest care and loving preparation by the hand of 
Deity for the advent of infancy into the world lies the 
assnrance of eternal interest and the pledge that the best 
possible forces at the divine command will be unspar- 
ingly used to develop that interest ; and nothing that ever 
happens can hurt, in the long run. There is nothing in 
the universe that can hurt but fear. Ninety-nine per cent 
of all the fear that hurts in this world comes through the 
religions of the world ; not that a proper religion is harm- 
ful, but the religions are all based upon fear, Christendom 
(so-called) included. The religion of truth, or natural 
religion, is minus the fear motor. The main incentive in 
Church power is the squeal of horror through fear of 
death or the condition they place beyond death. 

To question the existence of Deity on the ground of 
existing evils, such as war, poverty, railroad accidents, 
infant mortality, and thousands of other calamities that 
are the direct product of the selfish greed and maladmin- 
istration of man, and a wilful violation of those very laws 
in the divine order intended as safeguards against just 
such a condition, is to stand on the same dunce-block 
with the parson, who speaks of the infant victim of land- 
lord blood poison as a mysterious providence of God. 
That kind of providence is wholly the work of man, and 
there is no mystery connected with it. 

The fact that the evidences of especial care and tender 
thoughtfulness seem to depart with youth are the strongest 
evidence of love and a continued interest. What would 
creation amount to if it were always cradled in primitive 
elements, or if it were provided w^ith everything to pre- 
serve it from exertion? It would be no better than a 



256 RECAPITULATION. 

clam or a jelly-fish. The evidences are that the last act 
in a man's transport beyond is a continuation of the same 
loving principle that so manifestly welcomed him into the 
world. Science shows that death is comparatively pain- 
less, except for the torture that man has introduced into 
it. What matter, then, if the lightning strike him down, 
or he is taken off by any of nature's accidents ? Is that 
any evidence of the absence of Deity or of love ? Not 
the slightest ; for no accident can harm him, and no 
calamity can hurt him. As Christ told his disciples 
(Luke xxi. 16, 18), " Some of you shall they cause to be 
put to death. . . . But there shall not a hair of your head 
perish " ; i.e. it is impossible for one man to hurt another. 
God has so regulated the relations of material and eternal 
interests that it makes no difference whether your change 
come ten years earlier or twenty years later ; otherwise it 
would not occur at all stages and conditions of life. 

The eagle broods over her young, cares and provides 
for them with all the tenderness and solicitude of love and 
affection ; but when their wings are developed, she pulls the 
nest from under them and forces them to fly, because they 
have outgrown the condition of squabhood and become 
eagles, and the old bird wishes them to act like eagles. 

"I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are children of 
the Most High. But ye shall die like men" (Ps. Ixxxii. 
6, 7). What, then, is death but pulling out the old nest for 
the escape of the newly fledged Deity from its squabhood 
to the dominion of the kingdom of space, where it can 
spread its broad pinions and traverse the universe ? Christ 
refers to this passage when the Jews were about to stone 
Him for claiming to be a Son of God, when he quotes 
this passage to show that it was the legitimate relation of 
mankind (John x. 34, 35). 



RECAPITULATION. 



257 



Christ was the Son of God, in the especial sense that He 
assimilated the principles of the divine character until He 
became one with those principles. 

The term Christ has no exclusively personal sense. 
When translated it simply means anointed and belongs 
to the whole concrete body of divine assimilators. When 
He said, "Where two or three are gathered together in 
m\' name, there am I in the midst," He did not mean 
gathered to a nominal person, but to a uniform massing 
of divine principles. He is not there as the third person 
singular, but is there as the spirit of the whole. Scores of 
diverse orders, extremely opposed to each other, that would 
not admit that Christ could be with their opponents, gather 
to the nominal Christ, who ignore every principle constitu- 
ting His character, and practically omit the entire relation- 
ship that distinguishes Him and His from all others. 

Take, for example, the Church of Rome, as represented 
in that international monarch, the Pope, who claims to 
represent Christ. In what respect are they alike ? 



The Christ 

Had no place to lay His head 
(Matt. viii. 20). 

Came not to destroy men's lives, 
but to save them (Luke ix. 
56). 

Condemned the rich and blessed 
the poor. 

Taught that it was next to im- 
possible for the rich to enter 
the kingdom of heaven. 



The Pope 
Is a millionnaire. 



Has slaughtered millions of hu- 
man beings. 



Robs the poor to increase the 
rich. 

Makes the salvation of the rich 
easy, for money payments. 



258 



RECAPITULATION. 



Gave a free religion, without 
money and without price. 

Invites all children to come to 
Him, mthout distinction. 

Taught not to resist evil, but to 
bless and do good to all ene- 
mies. 

Taught that God is love, and 
nowhere mentions or infers 
divine wrath. 

Was the persecuted of the 
world. 

" Saul, Saul, why persecutest 
thou me ? " " Who art thou. 
Lord ? " ''I am Jesus, whom 
thou persecutest." 



Makes religion the highest com- 
mercial expense system in the 
world. 

Forbids all but Catholic chil- 
dren to come to Christ. 

Fights all opponents to extinc- 
tion. 

Keeps up a constant tirade about 
the wrath of God. 

Is the persecutor of the world. 

According to this text, the pa- 
pacy has crucified a thousand 
Christs where the Jews have 
one. 

According to this text, the popes 
have persecuted a thousand 
Christs where Saul persecuted 



And so we might continue the subject ad infinitum^ 
but we should find Christ and the Pope at the two opposite 
poles every time ; and so would it be to carry the compari- 
son through the entire Church, Cathohc and Protestant ; 
not, perhaps, with the same sharpness of contrasts, but 
the principles are constantly- clashing. To be sure, they 
have got His Golden Rule folded in a napkin and buried 
in the earth, but have no practical use for it. To be sui^e, 
they boast of charities ; but the}^ first create the necessity 
for charity, and di*aw the means from those they claim to- 
benefit. The oxAy real charity is to abolish the conditions 
that call for it. 



RECAPITULATION. ^ 259 

If the Jews committed the unpardonable sin in ascrib- 
ing holy things to devils, then the Church has reversed the 
order by ascribing devilish things to God. 

Christ's words, that the fruit proves the tree, are veri- 
fied in this great tree of Christendom, which has boniv? 
such bitter fruit to the world. If it had not possessed th^; 
root, it could not have borne the fruit. Let it take root 
again, and we will have the same crop of blood, poverty, 
ignorance, darkness, martyrs, oppression, persecutions, and 
pandemonium as before. It is the same tree, the same 
root, and the same seed. Twenty-five years of parochial 
schools are sufficient to develop a generation of bigots 
that will lay a bigger foundation for dark ages than Con- 
stantine had at his command. The tree has already been 
transplanted, and is beginning to bear some fruit. How 
many more steps is it to selling indulgences again, and to 
reviving all the wild carousals of the Middle Ages, when 
devils got drunk on martyrs' blood, and the Church and 
hell were one? Not so many as some imagine; indeed, 
the universal monarch is well pleased with present prog- 
ress. But what has Protestant Christianity done in 
this matter? It has saddled its responsibility on to 
Christ, in a vicarious dogma inherited from the Poj^e, and 
bought the indulgence to sell its birthright (liberty) for a 
mess of political pottage ; and it has even gone so far as 
to seek alliance with the Roman Catholic Church, for 
mutual advantage in saddling the world still more witii 
their bio'otry. 

Protestants know very well that Catholics keep up 
the form of indulgences to-day, although they claim that 
they are in a mild form ; but as long as they use the term, 
it implies any construction they are pleased to put upon it. 



260 KECAPITULATION. 

Indulgence means indulgence to-day, and those that pur- 
chase them, through any consideration, do so, because 
they expect the benefit of an equivalent indulgence ; and 
the principle will be just as good to fill the coffers of the 
Church, for the privilege of a devil's license when the 
world has grown a little darker, as it was in the Middle 
Ages. 

Our hope lies not so much in the prospect of the en- 
lightenment of the Church of Rome as it does in the 
enlightenment of the Protestant world. When Protes- 
tantism gets the beam of bigotry borrowed from pagan 
papacy out of her own eye, then she will stand some sight 
to enlighten her neighbor. 

But while we see the Church of Rome slowly creeping 
back to its den of darkness, we see signs of the Protes- 
tant body rapidly breaking up through the intelligence 
that is everywhere breaking through her ranks and flank- 
ing her forces. This intelligence is divine, and is the 
coming (presence) of Christ in the only sense it was ever 
intended, and is that which shall destroy the man of sin 
(present order) with the brightness of its presence ; i,e. 
clearness of its manifestation. Then let Protestants, in- 
stead of opposing the new light as the Jews did, seek it 
in searching out facts, not fancies ; then will they be in 
condition to make common cause and effectual efforts 
against Catholicism, and not before then. 

It is the unanimous opinion of Christendom that there 
is yet to be a millennium in the future, which shall correct 
all the errors of the present order, and be a model dis- 
pensation : tliat is a universal admission that the present 
is wrong, and the right is yet to come. Which, then, is 
Christ's order, the present or that which is to come? 



RECAPITULATION. 261 

Christ's mission was to introduce a new system of gov- 
ernment founded upon the Golden Rule or law of love, 
which is the sum and substance, diameter and circumfer- 
ence, of the kingdom of God. For this reason, He re- 
jected the existing form said to have been offered Him, 
and for this cause, the world rejected both Him and His 
Golden Rule, and does to this day. 

Righteousness by love is the law of the kingdom, the 
righteousness of Justice is only tributary and subordinate 
to that kingdom, while Love is the kingdom itself. Love 
is the Supreme Ruler, and Justice the servant. Justice can 
make no demands on Love, for Love owes her no allegiance. 
Justice has no claim upon men said to be born in heredi- 
tary sin ; for the very fact of the injustice of saddling 
sin on to an unborn infant places Justice in the r61e of 
debtor, and not of creditor ; and we defy the world to 
reverse the order by any sj'stem of honest reckoning. 
Therefore if all men are born in hereditary sin, then 
Justice owes an immortal debt to ever}' person born, and 
can have no possible immortal claim upon them until that 
debt is discharged. Justice is not one-sided; it cannot 
exact claims without punctually and exactly redressing 
claims: if it required its ''pound of flesh," it is under 
obligations by its own law not to shed blood in taking it. 

Men are heirs of God in the sense that their intelli- 
gence is of that character which causes them to enter into 
His thought, and make it their own. In just that proportion 
that men are capable of receiving His mind, and assimi- 
lating it, so that they think in unison with Him, they are 
of Him. AVe talk about inspiration as something doled 
out to measure, and localized to a limited period of time, 
to certain favorites called prophets ; when evidences are 



262 RECAPITULATION. 

conclusive that there never was a time when there was 
such an outpouring of inspired thought as now, and 
thought that is working a transition of the moral, relig- 
ious, political, and physical conditions, such as the world 
never knew and never dreamed of. 

Did man before this century ever dream that men 
could talk across the broad Atlantic. " But," says one, 
" that is science." Yes ; and what is science but the in- 
spiration of truth, with the law of evidences to back it? 
How is inspiration developed? Simply by putting one's 
self en rapport with the subject he wishes to develop. If 
science, he fills himself with it ; if electricity, he places 
his intellectual powers in position to fill with the subject 
of that ; if to prophesy or to interpret prophecy, he 
couples his receiving capacity on to that. And such was 
the position of Christ as He stood there amidst the transi- 
tion of dispensations with His soul imbued with the sub- 
ject of prophecy. As the keen e^^e of His prophetic spirit 
penetrated down through the dismal gloom of the dark 
ages. He saw the beastial caricature of Himself and the 
monstrous burlesque of His doctrines rise up out of the 
pagan sea, develop into that awful realistic illustration of 
the hell of their own creation, with its tortures of the 
damned and its retinue of official fiends, torturing, burn- 
ing, butchering, sawing, maiming, impoverishing, and dis- 
tressing humanity to the extreme suffering capacity by all 
the power of their cruel ingenuity, until millions of vic- 
tims had been sacrificed to dogmas of devils by devils in- 
carnate, vicars of Satan, whose hellish work qualified them 
only for the executors of the inferno, of which they were 
the authors and representatives. Not content with the 
work of injury to God and His creation, they com[)leted 



RECAPITULATION. 263 

their Satanic mission by addiiig insnlt and blasphemy in 
filling np their cup of iniquity, by claiming to be sons of 
hravcn and vicars of God, and forging His name to their 
ghastly system of hell and doctrines of devils ; perpe- 
trr.iing the most gigantic libel ever transacted, for long, 
weary years, until years passed into decades, and decades 
into centuries, and centuries rolled up a thousand years, 
and the end was not yet : not until this hell of demons 
were surfeited with gore and glutted with slaughter, or as 
Revelation terms it, drunk with the blood of martyrs, did 
this, the worst of all demoniac work and the most pro- 
tracted ever recorded, begin to wane. 

Looking through the horoscope of this prophetic vision, 
He brings the telescope of inspiration to bear on the nine- 
teenth century, and discovers there the rising day-star ap- 
pear on the horizon of human thought, and watches it fade 
into the breaking day of returning reason, until the bright 
sun of intellectual development pours its dazzling rays of 
searching investigation upon this miasmatic mist of mala- 
rial fog and spiritual poison, clearing up the divine at- 
mosphere, and disclosing the pagan beast with papal head 
and Protestant tail in its true character, which cannot live 
in the clear light and pure atmosphere of the Sun of Right- 
eousness ; " whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit 
of his mouth, and shall destroy by the brightness of his 
[presence] coming" (2 Thess. ii. 8). 

Inspiration is neither old nor new, but is eternal, based 
upon potent laws as operative as the laws of any science, 
but less understood simply because of being ignored. 
Men get the idea that they are something set off sep- 
arate from God and independent in their action. So 
we hear them talk of how they do this, that, and the 



264 llECAPITULATIOlSr. 

other great thing ; as that Abraham Lincohi liberated the 
American slaves, when we that were living iu the time of 
that deliverance know that it was brought about by a force 
of unavoidable circumstances as irresistible as God ; and 
Abraham Lincoln was only a victim of the force, but 
never was the force or any part of it, but as much so as 
any man or body of men are of any great reform. Before 
slavery was abolished, the men could be counted on one's 
fingers that dared to say that it ever would be abolished, 
and they were laughed to scorn ; but after it was done, 
they say, "We abolished it," or, "Abraham Lincoln did 
it," because he issued a proclamation to that effect, which 
the great Jehovah forced upon him as the sole condition 
of our national life. 

As a member in good standing of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church for thirty years, our experience and obser- 
vation have taught us that the "average Christian is far 
better than his creeds," and with them as persons we hnve 
no issue ; but with their system of creeds and dogmas we 
have entered into an eternal war of extermination, with 
the full assurance that all the allied forces of divine re- 
sources are marshalled against them, and the work which 
is already in progress will be fully accomplished. We 
look with favor upon no faction of the great system. It 
is all one system, both Catholic and Protestant, and all 
springs from the same ancient root of pagan idolatry, and 
is constituted in superstition, fear, and "old wives' fables." 
We have forever parted with all reverence for her character 
whose history is characterized as the most violent, brutal, 
and bloody on record ; whose civil reign was tyrannical, 
cruel, and wicked to demonism ; whose moral record is so 



KECAPITULATION. 265 

corrupt that her history cannot be written without violating 
the laws reguhiting the publication of indecent literature. 
Do you say she has reformed? Then let her die in the 
virtue of that reformation. Who ever thinks of restoring 
a minister to holy orders who had been convicted of lewd- 
ness, thievery, and murder? The same principle holds 
good in plural bodies as in single. The index finger of 
prophetic symbol points to the utter extinction of this 
temple of fraud, and declares that not one stone of its 
constituency shall be left upon another (Matt. xxiv. 2), 
while the verbal word of Revelation declares that it shall 
go out with violence (Rev. xviii. 21). 

Whoever believes this dispensational order to be Christ's 
order, or a Christian form of government, social, indus- 
trial, or commercial system, let him answer the following 
questions : — 

By what possible consistency of interpretation can the 
concrete body of Christ be so divided against itself as to 
represent two antngonists, who organize, arm, and watch 
each other with eternal vigilance, lest one strike the other 
at a disadvantage ? 

By what possible law of construction can the nations 
that claim the name of Christ, keep their war preparations 
up to the present fighting standard, draining the countries 
nnd distressing the people for the purpose of fighting each 
other, be coupled on to the character of Christ? Who 
authorized the name of Christ to represent the govern- 
mental system where labor is obliged to organize and 
fight for the privilege to live, and where capital enforces 
labor into pauperism and starvation? 

What relation does a system bear to Christ, whose 



266 HEC APIT UL ATIONo 

couclition is so corrupt that the whole mass is obliged to 
divide off into factions representing the various social, 
religious, political, industrial, and commercial branches, 
for the purpose of encroaching and resisting the encroach- 
ments upon each other? Does it make any set of thieves. 
Thugs, or pirates Christian simply because they have the 
aud;\city to take the name? Can the name of Christ be 
hawked about, as Indian chiefs represent cigar-stores, 
to stand at the entrance of every order of corruption, as 
a decoy to bait men into institutions that have not the 
first principle of His as an operative constituent, without 
committing sacrilege? 

Borrowing a modern slang to express a fact of destiny, 
we declare that the Church '' must go." The going of 
the Church and the coming of Christ are synonymous. 
The cause by one is the result of the other. As the 
Church is not the fruit of His intellectual planting, it 
cannot stand in the face of His intellectual development. 
The bursting forth of that new-born light from the hidden 
womb of interior darkness is the new birth or resurrection 
of life. It disannuls the Church's covenant with death, 
and destroys her agreement with hell (Is. xxviii. 18). 
It destroys the fear of the grave, and extracts the sting 
of death. ^'O death, where is th}' sting? O grave, where 
is thy victory? The sting of death is sin ; and the strength 
of sin is the law" (1 Cor. xv. 55, 56) ; i.e, the self-imposed 
hiw by the Church gives sin a character and personality 
nut its own ; and fans it into a flame of fire which to the 
i:nagination thrusts the sting of torture into the foreboding 
of future existence. 

''But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory 



RECAPITULATION. 267 

through our Anointed " ; i.e. through the anointing light 
of divine intelligence, which Christ first introduced into the 
world, and which is now reappearing, as the light of the 
sun from the darkness of a total eclipse, and dispelling the 
horrid nightmares of self-imposed laws and penalties that 
never had an existence in the mind of Deity. 



0^ 



